John Draper, a webcaster who runs the Atlantic Sound Factory Radio Station, found his station's growth and viability limited by the royalty rates determined by Copyright Royalty Board, so he registered the SaveNetRadio.org domain. After fellow webcasters banded together to support the site, it has been instrumental in spreading the word about webcasters' plight to the public and in turn, to Congress.
Under pressure from Congress, SoundExchange offered a deal to small webcasters that would allow them to pay their old rates (10% or 12% of revenue, depending on their size), but the deal limits participating webcasters' size and effectively prevents them from playing independent or rare tracks from non-SoundExchange labels, they would have to find each of these labels individually and then pay them the CRB-mandated rates.
Draper elected not to participate in the deal because the revenuecap would restrict his station's size to the point that it would beimpossible to grow or attract larger advertisers. From the New York Times:
(The articlealso contains an interesting history of how Draper got his station offthe ground and managed to add enough server space to meet growingdemand.)
