This post is the second of a two part interview with Blake Morgan and David Lowery about the newly announced webcasting rates as determined by the Copyright Royalty Board.
MTP: How do you feel about the CRB decision in general as far as rates go?
Well it’s a mixed bag. Leans bad. The rates went up marginally for Pandora, and that seems to be the lead in the press. But it looks like rates went down for other webcasters. You saw Pandora stock popped on the CRB news? Sometimes markets tell you what no one dares say. The markets are saying that this is good for webcasters and bad for artists. Of course you won’t see that in the tech or music business press. [Billboard posted one story on the wave of negative reactions at press time after David’s interview.]
MTP: Was this more of a…
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The Trichordist 
So the CRB is trying to convince artists that the rates being offered are market rates. Do they really believe that? No, and here’s why. If they believed these rates are market rates, why do they need to legislate that artists not be allowed to opt out of any category? If these truly were market rates, artists would not need to be forced to license their work, would they? A clear majority of them would gladly license their work. So it is pretty obvious that even they do not believe their own story telling,