Online streaming of music on internet radio providers will live on. Sharing music and video has always been a tight subject when it takes away from the profiting artist and production companies that put them out there. Developing internet radio businesses never stood a chance when the royalty rates for operating daily were set way too high.

Pandora, a popular internet radio provider, blew up on the net offering free music of your choice streamed across the web. The company almost dissolved when agreements did not close to renegotiate a new royalty structure. Even Congress got involved by passing the Webcaster Settlement Act in 2008 which gave only a year for an agreement to be made  between webcasters and a company called SoundExchange. SoundExchange is the collector of royalties which divids them up to the rightsholders, in this case it is the artist and production companies.

The settlement that was agreed upon today will divid webcasters into three types of service, subscription-based, large services, and small services. Webcasters had to agree to pay $25,000 for legal access to the music that they broadcast over the internet. Pandora founder Tim Westergren, said “if it hadn’t been resolved, we would have been done.” In the agreement made, webcasters can stream music as long as it’s not taking from product sales with downloads.