Two industry publications are open here on the desk, "Electronic Musician Magazine" and "TV Technology Magazine," bringing news of changes we should know about.
The Recording Academy is reviewing copyright laws and music-licensing issues. On their To Do list is an initiative that would expand royalty payments to include engineers, mixers, and producers in addition to the traditional composers, musicians, publishers, and recording companies. Sounds on the surface like that will translate to higher royalty costs for all forms of broadcasting.
In the arena of radio/TV spectrum the FCC is planning "spectrum auctions" with a concern that we are running out of spectrum. What are spectrums but the selling of public airwaves with no disclosure about where the money goes... we never hear about getting a refund for the sale of "our" spectrum. As the spectrum becomes more scarce our little wish for an itsy power boost for Part 15 FM is likely lost in the scramble.
Video and audio standards for TV and video are being completely revamped, to include MPEG-H audio, a complex multi-channel system proposed by Fraunhofer, and of course will require completely re-equipping video and audio studios to accomodate the changes.
So far there's no talk of bringing MPEG-H multi-channel audio to FM or CDs, but standardization might eventually cause it to happen.
Although not mentioned in either publication, scientific sources report that we are in the world's 6th extinction event with species being lost at a growing rate, human beings near the top of the endangered list. Not much is said about it, because we lack previous extinction experience. It's one situation that might not be helped by Part 15 radio.
Hopefully we'll be extinct before any new royalties kick in. Gonna make it tough to collect.
In my opening post above, when I said, "What are spectrums but the selling of public airwaves...", what I meant to say was:
What are auctions but the selling of public airways