Tough times for niche US streaming sites as they are targeted by the RIAA

Two US-based niche music streaming sites,  ReelRadio and PatesTapes.com, face potential closure following RIAA requests to restrict their services. 

Torrentfreak reports that ReelRadio, a service focused on streaming historical radio shows that has reportedly paid thousands of dollars in licenses to BMI, ASCAP and SoundExchange,  has received warnings by the recording industry association requiring it to comply to stricter restriction in the streaming of archived content. 

These include the inability to provide details on what is contained in the archived recording, the removal of archived recordings after two weeks and the requirement for these archived recordings to be longer than five hours. 

PatesTapes, another niche site dedicated to vinyl-to-tape digital mixtape archives, has received a similar letter form the RIAA. The site claims to have paid $5,000 in licensing fees in spite of the service not generating any revenues. 

Obviously one can’t disregard the RIAA’s perspective as the organisation may be raising legitimate concerns as to these sites' use of the licenses they were granted, but it seems strange for the recording industry to focus on restricting and potentially impairing operations for niche realities that are legally licensed when there are much bigger issues to be tackled in the digital music space.

(Andrea Leonelli)