Live365, the platform which has hosted Spectro Radio for the last 4 years, announced to its broadcasters and listeners via email on 12/30/15 that its future was uncertain beyond 12/31/15. This is in part due to a recent Copyright Royalty Board ruling which removed all provisions for small and micro webcasters to broadcast on the web, and giving a distinct advantage to large web based corporations like Pandora and iHeartRadio. A vast majority of the stations served by live365 are small to mid-sized webcasters and hobbyists with little to no monetary revenue.
At the same time the ruling from the Copyright Royalty Board was announced, it became apparent to many of Live365’s investors that the future of small webcasting was uncertain, and those investors pulled out of Live365 leaving the company in a precarious financial position.
At this time, Live365 is actively searching for new investors, but the future is uncertain and in all likelihood Spectro Radio’s broadcast will go silent at midnight tonight (12/31/15).
The last four years of broadcasting Spectro have been amazing. It’s given us the chance to connect with so many wonderful people in the Disney community. We’d like to extend a heart felt thank you to all of you who have listened to and supported us over the years.
At this time, we can’t say for sure what the future holds for Spectro Radio. Of course we’d love to be able to find a new way to continue to bring Disney audio to our listeners and we are examining what options we might have to continue that, however, while there are many platforms out there that allow music streaming, many of them don’t cover licensing and royalty fees as Live365 did. It is important to us that artists and musicians get paid their fair share of the royalties, and also that we maintain a legal broadcast.
So, we hope you’ll enjoy our last days of programming. In the words of Jiminy Cricket at the end of SpectroMagic we “hope you had a good time!” And we hope that someday in the future we can once again be the Happiest Station on Earth.
– TeamSpectro