If I wanted to be annoyingly post-modern, I could just leave this blog blank and claim it was a gesture of solidarity, but I’m not the strong silent type, so instead, I’ll actually write something…

Okay, so, today, lots of American web radio stations are staying silent, as a form of protest against the royalty hike that’s due to come into play on July 15th. The hike consists of a charge of $0.0008 per song, per listener, and applies retroactively from January 1st 2006; it doesn’t sound like a lot, but it soon mounts up, especially if the station is at all popular. Big companies may be able to absorb the cost and carry on, but lots and lots of smaller stations will have to shut down instead.

I’m not entirely sure how anyone thought this would fly, but fly it has, and with the clock ticking, this radio silence seems to be a last ditch attempt to get someone somewhere to see sense. The music industry has undergone a lot of changes in recent years, and it just doesn’t seem to know how to deal with them — look at the problem of illegal downloading, the interminable DRM fiascos, and the attempts to extend the life of copyright on songs.

The problem is, though, that with each new move to thwart what the industry sees as a threat to its livelihood, it’s shooting itself in the foot. DRM hasn’t been a brilliant success, because everyone hates it, it can be cracked fairly easily, and people who were going to pirate stuff just pirate it anyway. Meanwhile, legitimate customers get penalised as they find they can’t play their paid-for downloads on their MP3 players because for some reason they aren’t compatible. Making examples of people by suing them in the hope that the rest of the downloading world will get scared hasn’t worked; and threatening internet radio might be the craziest move of all.

Radio stations are a way to get music heard by the masses, who will then go and purchase said music. Sure, some people may record songs from the radio and not buy them, but those are a minority. If greed means that radio stations stop broadcasting, music sales will go down. Nice work, guys.

So if you’re wondering why the Internet’s quiet today, you can find out what’s going on at www.savenetradio.org.