What sort of rules do you play by?

Being in the public eye (however obscure that public may be), I do try to act within some semblance of rules and ethics. And although I try to take the higher road, seriously … I’m not a saint.

The Plain Facts

Friends, I have to be frank with you. There just ain’t no Benjamins in the Ambienct music broadcasting trade. Although there is a .com domain up there in your Address Bar, I am 100% non-commercial.

I do not solicit donations, because that would be bending the rules a little too far, and I’d have to put them on my taxes, and report them to licensers, and the list goes on and on… Aside from the few promo discs that I receive from individual artists, labels and promoters, the whole S E B project is out-of-pocket.

99% of the music you hear on my station is from sources that I own. The other 1% that I have is public-license, or extracted from ahem alternate sources when the original media is simply unavailable.

I hand-craft my MP3s, so you won’t find me grabbing things from Napster / Morpheus / BitTorrent * Archival etc. Nor will you see me sharing the files that I’ve transcribed myself. Requests for raw files will be politely defrayed, or ultimately ignored.

For the immediate future, my transmission rate will be 56kB + 22050 Hz. It’s not supposed to be ‘perfect’. I want the artists to get their money, so if you want a higher fidelity version of something you hear, I heartily encourage you to track it down and buy a copy of your own.

Unfortunately, a lot of my collection is limited release and currently unavailable * Archival . Have faith – just keep listening and your unobtainable favorites will cycle around again eventually in a couple of days.

The S E B stream header displays the current Artist, Track, Album names and Year of release, where such information is available. It also provides a data tag which links into the Ambience for the Masses database. The tag is at the end of the title string, and starts with a /.

I doubt that S E B currently complies with the intricate details of the broadcast sections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act * Archival . For more information on how what I’m doing probably isn’t enough, please consult the following URLs:

I believe that S E B might run afoul of rules around the broadcasting the same Artist and / or Album too frequently. But that’s shuffle-play for you. A DMCA compliance algorithm is on the great list of future projects.

I have also come across the following documents regarding CARP and Webcasting rates * Archival . If fully enforced, they would likely shut me down due to the associated costs. Fortunately, the Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002 * Archival was subsequently passed. It’s not a panacea, but it’s a marked improvement.

I am currently licensed with BMI; their yearly costs and reporting requirements are quite tolerable. The vast majority of the songs in the S E B library are rather obscure, so I imagine than mr.s Eno and Gabriel are probably getting the lion’s share of the royalties for that handful of songs under BMI Licencing.

If you are an Artist / Agent / Label, and you hear one of your songs played, and you have a compliment / request / concern, please drop me a line and we will chat.

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