Stations shut down streaming after copyright ruling

We apologise for this streaming service not being available at the moment, says a message on the Grant Broadcasters’ website.

The company has shut down its audio streams as a result of the recent copyright decision, which ruled that stations must pay an additional copyright fee for online streaming.

When listeners click the ‘Listen Now’ button on any Grant Broadcasting stations, they now get silence and the message, which continues:

A recent High Court ruling has found that the simultaneous transmission of a radio broadcast over the internet is not a broadcast, and as a consequence, music licencing issues mean that this radio station is no longer able to offer this free streaming service.

We apologise for this inconvenience but would strongly encourage you to contact the Federal Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull or your local Federal Member of Parliament to express your concerns.

The same ‘streaming service unavailable’ message can be seen on all the Grant Broadcasters websites.

Grant Broadcasters’ action comes in the same week as an American study reports that 53% of internet users have listened to streaming of some kind. See our other report.

Tags: