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I have tried, on a couple of occasions, to set up an online radio station. To be able to legally play music and broadcast to AUS/NZ IPs you have to pay APRA a nominal fee and then a significantly larger fee to the PPCA.
The problem for small businesses in this sense is that there are no options for small webcasters to grow. You really have to already be a major player with large market share and capital, due to the PPCA's fee structure (below).
For each Quarter, you must pay PPCA a Licence Fee (exclusive of GST) which is the greater of:
a. $0.0021 (exclusive of GST) per Stream (excluding Streams of less than 30 seconds in duration), per User (Stream Rate); or
b. a minimum fee which is determined according to the Total Revenue and the number of Channels offered as part of the Service (Minimum Fee) –
Total Revenue/Quarter (GST excl) - Minimum Fee/Quarter (GST excl)
$0 to $5,000 - $1,000
$5,001 to $10,000 $2,500
$10,001 + $5,000; or
c. 25% of Total Revenue (exclusive of GST).
The only way someone is paying $0.0021 per Stream per User is if they have huge Cume. For someone who wishes to start a small online radio station as a business, they would probably be earning under $5000 a quarter and also close to zero listeners, not until their branding starts to attract listeners.
If the ACCC wants to help small business, target the fee structure with the PPCA. I don't think any of us in radio wish artists to not get paid for their work, but this could open up more exposure to their music and perhaps increase jobs for radio people in general. We might even see a boom as we have with YouTube. Many of the big YouTubers are media businesses all with their own staff, like a typical media organisation.