Webcasters in the US may now face stiff copyright fees for streaming music. Synopsis from Wired Magazine.

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has announced its decision on Internet radio royalty rates, rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the “per play” rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange (a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA).

The new rates force webcasters to pay for each song streamed to each user, and increase over the next few years as follows:

2006: $0.0008 to stream one song to one listener
2007: $.0011
2008: $.0014
2009: $.0018
2010: $.0019

Lots of analysis of what it means over on the RAIN web site, most of it not very optimistic.

They do a cost analysis based on current play levels, and it doesn’t look good for either small or big players.

Expect to hear lots more about this in the next few weeks.