April 18, 2007

Help Save Internet Radio

rmiles7721April 18, 20076Entertainment, Politics, Technology

I saw some news reports on this and have already signed a petition as well as sent letters to my congressmen but I received this email today and felt like it was important enough to post. Even if you don’t listen to Internet radio, this is an important issue and you should head on over and do what you can. Thanks

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Hi, it’s Tim from Pandora,

I’m writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn’t pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us.

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends – the more petitioners we can get, the better.

Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I’m no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster’s business potential.

I hope you’ll take just a few minutes to sign our petition – it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

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-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)

© copyright 2006, Pandora Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

360 22nd Street – Suite 440 – Oakland CA – 94612


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These are Great!

rmiles7721April 18, 20071Site News

But if you don’t want to listen to people making fun of your Christianity don’t click play. I just thought that they were so appropriate. I guess if I were a true Christian I wouldn’t find them so funny, but they are SO true. There are several parts, I am going to torture you and embed them all.

This is part two (duh)

part three

part four

I particularly like the tongues of fire in the last one.

I Am Taking The Promotion…

rmiles7721April 18, 2007Site News

…but I still don’t have a time line. I spoke with my Vice President this morning at length, and while the conversation sounded pretty positive you can never tell what’s going to happen with them. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone with my company has lied to me.

Later on in the day one of the guys in Alabama that might have also taken over the district called me up for a reference and to congratulate me. I guess that my VP had also visited him today and told him that had I not been wanting the district they might have pulled him back over here, but they were putting me in it instead. Good damn deal. That’s at least a $20k raise, possibly more once I have been there a few months.

They still have to fill my position and there are a couple of possibilities there, so it might be two days or two months, although they aren’t going to leave it open too long, and thanks to some changes that my company made this past year the only way that they could feasibly fill the spot and NOT promote me would be with a transfer, a lateral move putting someone from a different area into the spot. Since I hold the senior position on their promotion list (I’ve turned down four districts so far in the last year) they HAVE to offer it to me first.

It does mean that at least right away, posting may be a bit lighter, but for me light posting means one paid post and three or four normal ones anyway 🙂

I will probably take some time to write on my days off next week and save some of them as drafts for a few of those 20 hour days when all I want to do when i get home is to pass out.

I will end up with the three stores in the Villa Rica area, including the one where they arrested that dude for filming people in the bathrooms. I guess I need to leave my cameras at home.