Is it possible for the station itself to own music?

I mean that it owns it and all the DJs have the right to play it on air.

because I think it could be very very neat to make a "donate X monies towards buying <song/album> for SI" thing would be monkey spanking awesome.
that way users feel like they have a vote extra on what music is played on the station.

a forseeable problem is, of course, which songs and albums should we have up for donating towards? a limit has to be enforced or else people will get frustrated with the amount of choice, or with having a great amounts of choices and not the specific one they would like to donate to.

perhaps each DJ could state an album or song, and the choices would be limited towards this.

the reason I want the station to own the music rights is that if the DJ goes on hiatus or leaves completely, then the music will still be available.

what do you think?

I think I understand what you're getting at, however, there is no way for the station to actually OWN something unless it was created by one of the DJs at the station. We do offer a donation box so feel free to donate by using that as anything whether a penny, dollar, or more is always appreciated and goes to keep us up and running. Us owning music rights is fairly implausible as you have to pay thousands and sometimes millions of dollars to gain rights to music which of course you make a profit on each time its used.

As for DJs that go on hiatus or leave the station our music library is based solely from person to person and as I'm sure you know it's very often that when a song is popular most of the DJs will have obtained a copy of said song.

Perhaps you could explain better if I am not understanding properly but I think I have been able to answer your query in a sufficient manner.

oh i have been donating.
and i expect to do it more

also you understood correctly.
i just wanted to entice people to donate more

Thank you for the appreciation, we've considered a few fund raising ideas in the past however we dont like to force the idea upon our listeners. However, with the new site design coming along and the new SI Merchandise we will be putting out soon we hope to see revenue increase....


Oh wait...did I say all that out loud?

Darn.

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE \o/

The concept of ownership in music (and other intellectual works) is not all that clear to those who have not gotten their hands dirty with the details.

In any work (musical or otherwise) there are two distinct types of ownership. Ownership of the intellectual property (often mentioned as the Copyright) and ownership of the commercial exploitation rights.

Copyright is automatically owned by the person who created the work the very moment he or she finishes creating it. There is no special process involved in registering a copyright. There are however some steps someone can do to ensure that there is sufficient proof that he or she holds the copyright to the said work, should the occasion to prove that arises (like in matters of plagiarism etc). In that sense ALL music is copyrighted.

The Copyright holder also owns the commercial exploitation rights and can choose to claim them or not. He or She can also choose to pass on the commercial exploitation rights management to a 3rd company (better known as the Royalty Collectors) such as BMI, SESAC for a small fee. These companies are organized and monitor to the best of their ability the music they represent on various media and charge royalty fees for the usage of the works.

With those in mind, the only person who can really OWN a piece of music is the copyright holder of the track. Split Infinity Radio cannot own any music (other than any music it has created itself as an entity) and it's much the same as you as a person cannot own any music (other than your own). You do own the medium (the material side of it), but you only own a license to replay the intellectual property found in the medium (music, artwork etc).

Now, as SIRadio does not make the music it replays available as a direct download to the users/listeners but only through the stream (for which we do pay royalties for), it does not have any legal significance on how the musical files have been distributed inside its premises as it is covered by the legislation regarding fair use. It's also irrelevant legal wise for SIRadio of whether the music its djs plays on it has been legally or illegally obtained since we do pay royalties for each and every track we replay. We urge our staff though to obtain their music legally as a protective measure to them.

As you can clearly see the problem is not purchasing the music, or what dj purchases what. The problem is strictly the method of how the said music can be available for replay for all the djs since SIRadio is a "virtual" entity. There is no single studio, or single "cd cabinet", or single place where it exists as a company. It's all over the world and it lives directly from each respective staff member's house. A solution would be to incorporate a central music storage server available only to staff members through which all djs can have a common library.

So if you would like to donate for a concept that would make music available for all djs, donations for such a server's rental is the way to go.

There is a flip side though which states that each DJ has a unique persona on-air which partly is driven by their choices in their music library and it's what makes them distinct. Furthermore our current plans for the evolution of SIRadio (and trust me here, they are exciting) require that we place funds in other directions and venues. So if you want to help us make the financial burden easier to handle, the way to go is the chip-in donation widget on our front page since that lets us direct the funds the way we believe is more helpful to us.

Just one more note here to clarify our policy regarding donations and finance. Split Infinity Radio was, is and will be a free service to all listeners. It is funded solely by my pockets (which even if not deep manage to cope) and this is why we've cut corners and have found ways to run a quality service and cutting costs at the same time. Unlike other gaming related radios out there (cough cough) we do not require listener donations to "stay alive" and this is why our donations button was hidden in some obscure page for years. We strongly frown upon emotionally extorting our listeners for donations. Thus any donation that you might make honors us, makes us grateful towards you and is perceived as a token of your appreciation for the time and effort we've all been putting on this for almost 5 years now.

Finally .. I have to say.. WHOA!!.. huge all of text is huge!

omg wall of text!!!!


seriously awesome explanation of this boss! CHEERS!

i was about to write TL DR as a joke