How not to get caught with your stream down, while also keeping a finger on the pulse of your audience

(From Rain / Wednesday December 23, 2009)

CRB PUBLISHES DiMA/SX NEGOTIATED CAP ON MINIMUM FEES FOR COMMENT

The Copyright Royalty Board has published the details of the proposed cap on minimum fees for commercial and noncommercial webcasters operating under the CRB terms for the 2006-2010 period. Under the CRB’s 2007 determination, webcasters are charged a minimum of $500 a year per channel (this includes broadcasters’ Internet-only “side channels”), which could conceivably ramp up very quickly for webcasters like AccuRadio (450+ channels) and Pandora (which allows each listener to create up to 100 channels).

Lawmakers who understood the danger this posed to the young webcasting industry pressured SoundExchange to negotiate a more reasonable structure for minimum fees. In 2007, SoundExchange and DiMA announced a settlement for DiMA-represented operations which capped minimum fees at $50,000 (RAIN coverage here).

Now, the CRB proposed rulemaking would avail all commercial webcasers that operate under the statutory webcasting terms for 2006-2010 (that is, not those webcasters that operate under various negotiated settlements, see RAIN’s round-up of those deals here) of the $50,000 cap on minimum fees. The proposed rulemaking includes the same $500 minimum fee per channel for noncommerical webcasters, but without the $50,000 cap. Comments or objections to the proposed cap are due by January 22, 2010.

Wowza Media Server 2 Advanced Named Best Streaming Innovation and Wowza Media Server Pro Named Best Sever Hardware/Software

Evergreen, CO, November 19, 2009

Wowza Media Systems®, the media server software company, today announced that Wowza has again prevailed over Adobe® and Microsoft® in the Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards. Both Wowza Media Server® 2 Advanced and Wowza Media Server Pro were named top choices in their respective categories of Best Streaming Innovation and Best Server Hardware/Software.

Streaming Media magazine announced the winners of its annual Readers' Choice Awards at last night’s special reception at Streaming Media West 2009. More than 5,000 Streaming Media magazine and streamingmedia.com readers voted on this year's award nominees. Readers cast their votes for the top performing vendors in online video and streaming solutions in today's marketplace.

"The Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards are the only awards of their kind in the online video industry," says Streaming Media magazine editor Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen. "While other awards focus exclusively on content, this is the only awards program that honors the technology that makes it all possible, and it's definitely the only one where the people decide who wins. And this year, more than 5,000 votes were cast for more than 200 nominees. Clearly, people care deeply about the tools they use to get their jobs done."

Wowza streaming partner, Livestream, was also a winner at last night’s ceremony. Livestream received two awards: Best Online Video Start Up Company — Technology and Best Live Video Streaming Platform. Livestream is powered by Wowza Media Server software for Flash and iPhone streaming.

This is the third consecutive year that Wowza received nominations and has been honored with Streaming Media's prestigious Readers' Choice Awards. In 2007, as an upstart, Wowza won recognition against Adobe and Microsoft and surpassed both its primary competitors as the number one choice for media servers in 2008 and 2009.

"To get this level of acknowledgement from our customers and peers for the second year in a row is truly an honor," said Dave Stubenvoll, CEO and Co-Founder, Wowza Media Systems. "Receiving these awards from Streaming Media readers, a community devoted to the technology and business of streaming, further enforces our commitment to delivering the unmatched user experience for which Wowza has become known."

Wowza Media Server, currently deployed by over 30,000 licensees globally, is a high-performance, extensible and fully interactive Flash media server for live and on-demand streaming, chat, and recording. Wowza Media Server 2 Advanced extends this proven platform beyond Flash with multi-protocol streaming to the iPhone®/iPod® touch and other mobile devices, the Silverlight® player, QuickTime™, and IPTV set-top boxes.