Indie radio station needs licensing fees

Greetings, my name is James McFarland and I am the 54-year-old owner of the independent web-based radio station known as KMET-DB MetalRadio LIVE. The station has been on-air 24/7 for 3 years now.

Up until slightly more than a year ago, the station's listeners consisted of just my close friends. However, since then I have seen a small rise in listeners. I have also been receiving daily emails from PR firms and band members looking for air time and building a fan base. All of this has been without any advertising on my part. I wish to begin advertising for the station and take it to the next level by building our fanbase and helping those struggling bands as well.

The bottom line is that to make sure that the artists get paid, I have to obtain licensing through ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and SoundExchange. I have determined that overall the required annual fees will come to about $1200. This will approximately remain the same until the station acquires more listeners.

I have some ideas for how to handle these fees in the coming years but these ideas require time. The station also has a FaceBook page that I will be maintaining to give updates on our growth and on any ideas I have for the future. I desire to try and avoid the commercial sponsorship that seems to run the programming formats of other stations and results in the listeners having to hear commercials over and over. Your donations will make this possible for another year at least.

My fee calculations are based on a table from last year and if there is any money left over I will apply that toward next year's fees. I handle the monthly costs out of pocket and unless the number of listeners grows substantially I will be alright with doing so for the rest of the year.

Thank you so very much for taking the time to read this and an extra special thanks if you're able to help.