About Us

This station is run under the concept of free speech and the joy of music. We Do this for the FUN, and the JOY that MUSIC brings to our lives, and to share that with Others. But licensing and the RIAA is a real concern. We also believe that musicians are artists and should be able to make a living from their craft, but currently the licensing terms make running a station like this extremely expensive.

This isn't a new concern. Back in 2002 many Internet radio stations shut down because the new royalty structure was just too expensive. The base fee for a nonprofit organization, which Flownet-Radio is, is $500 a year and allows an average of 200 simultaneous listeners. And by allowing you to request a song from a list like we do means we'd have to negotiate with each record conglomerate directly. You can imagine how much that will end up costing us, not to mention legal fees.

In addition, there is another rather onerous legal requirement that would change the way this station works if we went will full licensing. We would be forced to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and obey these important highlights:

  1. Requests could not be played within one hour of the request being made or at a time designated by a listener.
  2. In any three-hour period, we would not be able to play any three songs from the same recording, and no more than two songs from the same recording in a row. If the songs are from an artist's anthology or box set, we could play no more than four songs (and no more than three songs in a row) during any three-hour period.
  3. We could only play songs authorized for performance in the United States, meaning no bootleg recordings or "mixer tapes."
  4. We would also have to "accommodate technological copyright protection measures or pass through any identification, which may be included in the song recording itself, as long as it does not impose substantial costs or burdens on the webcaster. Also, do not deploy or support technological means to evade these requirements"

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