Washington - Aug 23, 2007 - Sound Exchange has reached an agreement with several of the largest webcasters on Sound Exchange's proposed cap on the minimum fee charged against royalties for sound recordings played on Internet radio. Recently enacted regulations by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) require each webcasting service to pay a $500 minimum fee per station or channel regardless of the overall number of stations/channels they are streaming. The agreement addresses the concerns of certain webcasters about their liability for per-channel minima by calling for a cap of $50,000 per service on the $500-per-station advance against royalties.

This agreement applies only to signatory services and only on behalf of Sound Exchange members, but all the signatories intend to present this agreement to the Copyright Royalty Judges and seek its adoption industry-wide.

The agreement also calls for census reporting -- reporting all tracks played by a service as opposed to a sampling -- and cooperation on discussion and assessment of anti-stream-ripping technologies. There is no requirement that any of the services implement any particular technology, nor that they develop, or accept a particular technology from a third party.