No Dark Matter Show Now (Again)

Discussion forum for Art Bell's new show on the internet, Midnight in the Desert. Come in and discuss the latest news on Art, the show and guests.

Moderator: Super Moderators

User avatar
Fan
Lady with a
Posts: 5307
Joined: 05-09-2011 02:18 PM
Contact:

No Dark Matter Show Now (Again)

Post by Fan » 02-11-2015 07:20 PM

So, does this count as a retirement? LOL LOL LOL!!!
I have some very sad news to report, barring some sort of miracle there will be NO Dark Matter Radio show. Here is why: I will be unable to use ANY Bumper music, I will be unable to use any Theme music. The cost of using even the small amount that I use in my show stops us cold. Both Keith and I have talked this to death and there is no way around it.

Yes I could do the show with no music but I will not because it was part of the very soul of my show as any of my former listener's know. I feel like crying to be honest with you. Keith and me along with others have poured time and money into this effort. I was about to spend ,000.00 on just the Studio here in Pahrump. We had also cleared free streaming just as I had promised. The ..bottom line is that the music Industry has in my opinion shot themselves in the foot by making it impossible for anybody in my position to stream or provide any copyrighted music on the Web. That is why nobody, even Rush will do it. I am so sorry. If anything changes I will be right back on it. Just sad.
Art has obviously never heard of royalty free music or of paying licensing fees, which TONS of podcasts I listen to do.
The heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and the heartbreaking impossibility of lying about it.

― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

User avatar
Fan
Lady with a
Posts: 5307
Joined: 05-09-2011 02:18 PM
Contact:

Post by Fan » 02-11-2015 07:21 PM

the guy is unbelievable. I mean, before announcing everything he did not think of this? He's been in radio how long??
The heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and the heartbreaking impossibility of lying about it.

― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

User avatar
Raggedyann
Pirate
Posts: 5250
Joined: 08-22-2006 04:50 PM

Post by Raggedyann » 02-11-2015 07:46 PM

The guy is a flake and its time that we all stopped paying any attention to him, other than for a good laugh, which this latest crock of bull has provided me on a cold, wet, windy and boring day.

I remember years ago Alpha at the IW, used to post her disillusionment with Art. Even though I found Art's retirements frustrating and disappointing, I was still a huge fan and I thought Alpha was too hard on him. Turns out that Alpha was dead right in her assessments.
Last edited by Raggedyann on 02-11-2015 08:52 PM, edited 1 time in total.
“For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.” Simon Wiesenthal

User avatar
Riddick
Pirate
Posts: 15705
Joined: 11-01-2002 03:00 AM
Location: Heartland USA
Contact:

Post by Riddick » 02-12-2015 12:55 AM

This is on the artbell.com site.
Followup:

It warms my heart for some of you to be saying you do not care but for me it was a major part of the energy for me and I think the listener as well, I picked bumper music like others might pick a fine wine for a special dinner, it was part and I think a major part of the magic.

Followup 2:

Just for the record, I am not quitting, I am just not starting till we can resolve this in some way. I do not want or need anybody’s money. If we can find a way around this we will proceed. I was just trying to keep everybody up to date with the fact that we seemed to hit a brick wall. We are working on it.

User avatar
Raggedyann
Pirate
Posts: 5250
Joined: 08-22-2006 04:50 PM

Post by Raggedyann » 02-12-2015 03:16 AM

"Just for the record I'm not quitting" :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
“For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.” Simon Wiesenthal

User avatar
Riddick
Pirate
Posts: 15705
Joined: 11-01-2002 03:00 AM
Location: Heartland USA
Contact:

Post by Riddick » 02-12-2015 03:34 AM

Raggedyann wrote: "Just for the record I'm not quitting" :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
"I have not yet begun to quit!!"

User avatar
Riddick
Pirate
Posts: 15705
Joined: 11-01-2002 03:00 AM
Location: Heartland USA
Contact:

The Numbers on Playing Commercial Music on Internet Streamin

Post by Riddick » 02-12-2015 03:39 AM

More from artbell.com...
  • The bare facts from Keith:

    I’d like to provide you the info on how we determine costs of playing Art’s established commercial music on the Internet and in podcasts.

    Since 2007, Internet Radio stations were saddled with having to pay “mechanical fees” like that of CD publishers, that terrestrial radio stations were exempt from for decades. These fees were set by the Copyright board and when enforced caused companies like Pandora to re-visit their business model. Fortunately for them, being large operations, were able to appeal and negotiate lower caps on their usage. (It seems that it’s cheaper to pay 25% of their gross sales instead of the fees, imagine that! So 25% is a deal for them.) But pretty much everyone else in 2015 must currently pay 0.0023 for each playback of a song to a listener. There are no known exemptions for “bumper music” or partial playback.

    Leaving ASCAP and BMI aside for the moment, this one license fee is significant. It’s not inconceivable to expect 10,000 listeners to the show each night.

    Doing the math, 10,000 listeners x 12 songs a night x 22 days a month is $5566.

    The fees from ASCAP and BMI are based on your gross revenues. They want a straight percent off the top of any income from sponsors and subscriptions. (Which is all of our income.) They don’t even care that you only play 5 minutes of music an hour! So depending on how many subscribers we get, these fees go up and down. Not based on plays, but subscriber income. The additional fees added to the above is approximately another $500 per month. (Not counting SESAC yet.)

    So now we’re at $6066 / mo for 10,000 listeners.

    Think of the paying subscribers as having to pay for all the streaming licensing. So you have to have enough people paying to cover the cost of everyone. If we do not achieve a certain minimum, we cannot cover the costs right away. As the program grows, we must maintain a certain ratio to pay these fees. Let’s be generous and say we can achieve a 25% ratio of paid to free listeners.

    2,500 subscribers paying $5/mo yielding us $4.50 net is $11,250.
    Less $6066 for music license alone nets $5184 per month.


    That’s not much to pay for 3 full time people. Not to mention all the other costs of running this thing, bandwidth, equipment investments, software, storage costs, etc.

    As the show grows, maybe the subscriber base grows and maybe just the free stream listeners will grow. We believe the ratio needs to be closer to 35-40% subscribers to free listeners, to keep this running. Yeah, there is money to be made from those “very few” commercials, but it also raises the license fees. This ratio may be hard to maintain, let alone have enough to start on day one! Payments are made monthly, so we better have the funds ready!

    It gets worse!

    Now those downloadable podcasts that everyone wants, for those who pay the subscription, gets another license fee to handle “Permanent Digital Downloads.” These are the podcast files that can be downloaded on your MP3 player and played over and over, so the rates are even higher, 9.1 cents per song. Remember also, they don’t understand bumper music either, a song is a song, no matter how much of it. (We may stand corrected, but this seems to be the situation as it stands.) If we were to include 12 bumper music songs in a show we pay 12 times. So for each subscriber:

    12 songs x 9.1 cents x 22 shows a month is $24.02.

    So, who wants to pay $30 a month? Even if we could get beyond the streaming license costs, we could never have the music in the podcast file. Does that sound appealing to you either?

    Bottom Line

    In order to pay the outrageous “mechanical rights” license for commercial music playing on the “free to everyone” stream, we must have a certain percentage of the listeners to be paying subscribers. Yes we can offer more incentives to attract more subs. But we won’t really know.

    Get this, we would also be responsible to manually log each and every playback of a song, along with the number of people listening at that time, for each of the 12 songs on each of the 22 days on each of the streaming platforms we would appear on and supply that info to each licensing agency. Any volunteers?

    At this point who has a crystal ball?

    Going forward, if the music industry could understand the talk radio type of user, and establish a different rate structure for limited play bumper music, that would help. If we could operate under some other entity that already pays these fees, that would help, but we’d just be giving them more of our income also.

    P.S.

    If anyone in authority knows where we went wrong in our understanding of the rates quoted above, please contact me, [email protected] we’re hoping there’s a way.

User avatar
Raggedyann
Pirate
Posts: 5250
Joined: 08-22-2006 04:50 PM

Post by Raggedyann » 02-12-2015 05:15 AM

They want paying subscribers? Are you kidding me? And I suppose they'll want us to pay 2 yrs in advance so when Art retires after the first 3 weeks we can all go off the deep end yet again.

Fool me once..........:D
Last edited by Raggedyann on 02-12-2015 05:22 AM, edited 1 time in total.
“For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.” Simon Wiesenthal

User avatar
Raggedyann
Pirate
Posts: 5250
Joined: 08-22-2006 04:50 PM

Post by Raggedyann » 02-12-2015 05:27 AM

Riddick wrote: "I have not yet begun to quit!!"

"Yet"

New word game.
“For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.” Simon Wiesenthal

User avatar
Riddick
Pirate
Posts: 15705
Joined: 11-01-2002 03:00 AM
Location: Heartland USA
Contact:

Post by Riddick » 02-12-2015 05:51 AM

Raggedyann wrote: They want paying subscribers? Are you kidding me? And I suppose they'll want us to pay 2 yrs in advance so when Art retires after the first 3 weeks we can all go off the deep end yet again.

Fool me once..........:D
Image

It's allus nice when Art offers to take fans for a ride. Trouble is if you give the fans a ride, and you stop and start that ride over and over again at some point people will get carsick.

User avatar
Fan
Lady with a
Posts: 5307
Joined: 05-09-2011 02:18 PM
Contact:

Post by Fan » 02-12-2015 08:55 AM

Riddick wrote: Image

It's allus nice when Art offers to take fans for a ride. Trouble is if you give the fans a ride, and you stop and start that ride over and over again at some point people will get carsick.


ha!
The heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and the heartbreaking impossibility of lying about it.

― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

User avatar
Fan
Lady with a
Posts: 5307
Joined: 05-09-2011 02:18 PM
Contact:

Post by Fan » 02-12-2015 09:03 AM

What Art needs to do is to go to Rev3, Frogpants Studios, TWiT or another larger established podcaster and do the show under their umbrella. These guys already have everything worked out including sponsors, streaming solutions, etc...

However it will never work because Art is too picky and hard too work with.

We'll just have to ride his seesaw (see what I did there) to wherever he takes it, which is likely back into the ground.
The heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and the heartbreaking impossibility of lying about it.

― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

User avatar
Riddick
Pirate
Posts: 15705
Joined: 11-01-2002 03:00 AM
Location: Heartland USA
Contact:

Bumper Music Controversy Song Title Synchronicity

Post by Riddick » 02-12-2015 09:03 AM

Art's Modus Operandi to a tee. Just a coincidence? I think NOT

round·about \ adjective \ not simple, clear, or plain : long and confusing

43 Years Ago Today: Yes Releases Roundabout

Image

Released February 12, 1972 “Roundabout” is one of only two Yes singles releases to enter the Top 20 in the U.S., reaching #13 on the BILLBOARD MAGAZINE Pop Singles Chart. A shortened version of the album track, it has held up well over the years and remains a classic of its type. - Source

Additional Situationally Apropos Bumper Music Titles -
It Don't Come Easy - Right Back Where We Started From - Waterloo

User avatar
Riddick
Pirate
Posts: 15705
Joined: 11-01-2002 03:00 AM
Location: Heartland USA
Contact:

Post by Riddick » 02-12-2015 09:24 AM

Fan wrote: Art is too picky and hard too work with.
Not his fault. There's no making up his mind when it's changing all the time. It's those alien influences donchaknow!

User avatar
Fan
Lady with a
Posts: 5307
Joined: 05-09-2011 02:18 PM
Contact:

Post by Fan » 02-12-2015 09:29 AM

Riddick wrote: Not his fault. There's no making up his mind when it's changing all the time. It's those alien influences donchaknow!


Better get Linda Howe on that one! Hoagie too!
The heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and the heartbreaking impossibility of lying about it.

― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

Post Reply

Return to “Art Bell's Midnight in the Desert”