I agree. .017 for every listener on every track they hear. When you see .017 it doesn't seem much but if you think about it this way - say we have 25 listeners and all 25 listen to 8 tracks in an hour (that is low) it would be (my math skills are horrible so please forgive any mistakes) 3.40 for an hour. 3.40 x 24 hours in a day = 81.60 for one day. 81.60 times 30 days in a month = 2,448 x 12 months in a year = $29.376. That is for royalties only. Then there is the additional 500.00 a year to Sound Exchange just to be able to stream.. then there is paying your host.
We were paying Live365 about 50.00 a month for quite a bit of space and a 100 listener limit. We would average 6500-7000 total listening hours a month. That is small compared to some other stations. Now we are paying 6.00 a month for our host, and 60.00 a month to Stream Licensing. They cover our royalties as of now. There is a chance that cost will go up and if it does that will be the end of MHR. I am not sure exactly how Stream licensing is doing it. - maybe an agreement with Sound Exchange. I am just not sure. So our costs have gone up. Now here is the kicker.. we can only have 25 listeners at any one time - not 100. We also can not exceed 4000 total listening hours a month or what we pay Stream Licensing goes up. They will not even accept a station that has over 7K listening hours a month. Therefore we have to really watch our numbers. We may have to kick people off after a certain amount of time if we find ourselves exceeding what we can afford. It wouldn't be a harsh time kick off point - something like after a few hours. If there was space you could always log back on. This would be done to prevent people from starting a player and walking away letting it go for hours on end. We had a person in Lithuania do that - after 18 hours I kicked them off.
Some of the larger stations have advertisers/sponsors. We do not. Every penny to keep the station going comes from us. We have tossed the idea around, but it would be a last resort done only to try to stay on air. Not something we really want to do.
There are a lot of great stations that had to close down and walk away. it makes me VERY sad. I can only imagine what the costs for MouseWorld would be - terrifying. They were huge.
This is also making me VERY thankful we (so far - knocking on wood) have been able to weather the storm. Our survival lies in the hands of Stream Licensing and their ability to get a decent rate.
Here is a link to the petition that is circulating. Every single signature is a helpful.
http://www.radiodiversity.org/
It seems like the "little people" are being left out in the cold more and more. Totally off topic 
but our school district is dealing with a situation this morning just as crazy. 
UIL re-alignments were announced and our small town in South Central Texas was placed in a district with East Texas schools....road trips of 100+ miles ahead for the next 2 years for our athletic students. How stupid is THAT, asking these young people to ride a school bus 100+ miles on a school night after playing a game ending at 9 PM? Crazy things happening all around and my signature has been added for your cause. 
) but both were band students. I'm SO glad I'm not President of the Band Boosters anymore and having to deal with evening meals during those away games. 
We are now following DGD 
who enters her freshman year in August. She will playing high school volleyball, soccer and tennis. If I'm not mistaken, the volleyball teams are classified with the basketball teams which are in a "different" district...another CRAZY part of UIL. But, the bottom line, even during the "lean years" when we didn't have children or grandchildren involved in sports, we STILL attend the school athletic events in support of those students who put forth the extra effort it takes to be involved in sports. It's very frustrating that now, they'll see less of that support at their away games. You are so right; nothing is EVER easy. 
