[Image credit: Radio And Internet Newsletter: www.kurthanson.com/dos]

Internet radio listeners, forget about the Apple iPhone releasing on June 29th for one minute and realize the consequences of what will happen on July 15th, 2007.  Royalty rates for Internet radio will be increasing at an alarming rate and was set by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington D.C.  Two days ago, about 21 Internet radio websites shut down their service to make a statement.  It was officially the Internet Radio Day of Silence on June 25th.  I was not aware that this was going on until I read a blog post on Yahoo’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal^[1].

“The new royalty rates are higher than the revenues anyone can hope to make from related advertising. In other words, we all lose money on Internet radio starting July 15th. Yahoo! has no intention of operating LAUNCHcast radio as a loss-leader,” wrote Ian C. Rogers of Yahoo! Music.  Rogers began working for Yahoo! Music three and a half years ago after Yahoo! acquired Mediacode.  Rogers wrote a brief history of the situation with the Copyright Royalty Board on the Yahoo! Music Blog.^[2]

If the bill passes, Internet radio companies will start losing money.  Less than 3% of Yahoo! Music subscribers pay for music and the money made from ads is not sufficient enough for the hike in royalty fees.  So if Yahoo! Music keeps losing money along with the other Internet radio companies, keeping them afloat won’t be easy.  Many companies cannot afford the royalty rates and may even shut down.

Royalties will increase between 300 and 1200 percent.  Internet radio currently pays double of what satellite radio pays and Internet radio listeners jumped from 45 million listeners per month to 72 million listerners since last year.  Yahoo! Music has been providing value to Internet radio listeners for years and for free.  I don’t want to see the service taken away as it is one of my favorite products made by Yahoo!

For more information, visit http://www.savenetradio.org.

[1] Yodel Anecdotal: Yahoo! Music goes radio silent
[2] Yahoo! Music Blog: Yahoo! Music Goes Radio Silent

This Thursday, MTV Networks will be launching a virtual network to complement its TV show, Pimp My Ride hosted by Xzibit.  The website will be launching in celebration of the show’s new season.

MTV has a couple of other virtual networks for other shows, Virtual Laguna Beach and Virtual The Hills.

Users of Virtual Pimp My Ride will be able to interact with simulations of Xzibit and Mad Mike (another host) to express what they would like to do with their car.  To buy and modify cars, users will have to use MTV currency.

It is not yet known how to attain MTV currency and whether there will be actual money involved.  I’ll write more about it as details are released.

Oodle is a startup that has over 20 million classified ads and features listings from all over the U.S. and the UK. Oodle has raised $11 million in a 2nd round from current investors, Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures along with new investor, JAFCO Ventures. The first round was $5 million. Oodle has a partnership with The Washington Post (D.C.) and The Sun (British tabloid owned by News Corp).

This is Amp’d Mobile’s 5th round of funding and the amount is quite substantial. According to the SEC, Amp’d has raised $107 million. This round of funding was provided by Old Lane Management (hedge fund created by former Morgan Stanley execs) and joins previous venture backers: Columbia Capital, Highland Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Intel Capital, MTV Networks, Tudor Investments and Universal Music. The CEO of Amp’d is Peter Adderton, who also founded Boost Mobile.

Gal Trifon and Ofer Zadikario founded Eyeblaster in 1999 and has established the company as a leader in digital marketing. The company had announced today that it has raised $30 million in funding from private investors. The company has been profitable every year since 2002. The company was founded in Israel and had previously raised $10 million ($8 of which came from Insight Venture Partners). The current investors are Eli Barkat (BRM Capital), Jonathan Kolber (Koor Industries, Ltd.), Shlomo Dovrat (Carmel Ventures), Harel Beit-On (Carmel Ventures), and Nir Barkat. Eyeblaster designs rich media and standard banners.

MyCoupons, a Pittsburgh-based company that was the first online coupon site launched in 1995 and took in $750,000 to re-launch its product… as a social network. “We have invested close to three quarters of a million dollars over the past year and we are proud to be able, today, to announce our re-birth” stated a company representative [Source: alarm:clock]. Jason Wolfe, the original founder of MyCoupons had bought back the domain name from Direct Response Technologies after the Save.com (who bought it for MyCoupons.com for $20M) went bankrupt after the dot-com bust.

Ludic Labs is a San Mateo-based company that is run by Dr. Brian Totty. According to alarm:clock, Totty was most recently a Venture Advisor at Foundation Capital and was a Founding VP of Research and Development and a General Manager of Inktomi. Inktomi was bought by Yahoo! in March 2003. “Ludic Labs is creating a mass-scale, social-media service for internet and mobile devices” stated a Ludic Labs representative. The company says that they are well funded and are planning on hiring Python, Web UI, and Internet Service developers around Silicon Valley shortly.

Boorah, a retaurant review website based in New York has raised angel funding and is now looking for venture capitalist funding. The company was founded by Nagaraju Bandaru and Eric Moyer. Both of them were previous executives for wireless broadband provider, MetroFi. Moyer presented BooRah at the past DEMO conference.

[Information Source: PaidContent and alarm:clock]