Memo from the KPFA music director:
On Monday, the new licensing agreement between the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and SoundExchange about royalties for music on the web goes into effect. For this reason, we can no longer archive music shows for more than 14 days. As it is, we can tell from our web stats that most listeners do not access programs older than two weeks.
This regulation is not limited to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and SoundExchange. They’re just put in the position of having to implement it for their affiliate stations. It goes back to the RIAA and music licensing agencies (BMI, ASCAP, etc…) creating a series of restrictive legal regulations governing radio station streaming of music called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, enforced by the FCC (who issue the violations and penalties), allegedly in the name of supposedly reducing the potential of free downloading of artists music from radio station web streams.
All broadcast (music) radio stations that also stream their audio on the internet are now supposed to be limited to only two weeks access of any music program archives. WMBR at M.I.T. (where I do my program) is not a member of the CBP or any other broadcasting agency, but also had to reduce their archive access from formerly three months down to two weeks to comply. Any station that has not done so is either flaunting the regulations, or more likely, is unaware of the regulations.