The Radio Music License Committee (RMLC) is pleased to inform you that we have reached a settlement with BMI which: (i) finalizes license fees for the period 1997-2000 at the levels previously owing under the interim licenses in effect for those years; and (ii) establishes new BMI performance licenses for the period 2001-2006 that, for the first time, unlink the fees payable to BMI from station revenues and instead set forth flat dollar amounts of fees that will be payable to BMI by the commercial radio station industry as a whole, and provides stations with the right to perform BMI music as part of a simultaneous stream of their over-the-air signals on their Internet web sites. (You will need to check with your own attorneys to determine what additional rights may be needed to permit you to stream your signal on the Internet)

Eliminating the revenue-based music licensing system has been an important objective of the industry for many years, and it was only after years of very difficult and hard-fought litigation that we were able to achieve this objective.

The formal Court Orders finalizing the settlement are expected to be entered by the Court on September 17,2003. This includes the Order terminating the litigation and instituting the new fee methodologies, as well as a related Order mandating that each station make certain small payments to the RMLC in order to fund its administration of the new licenses as well as its continuing representation of the industry as to music performance rights issues.

Even though these agreements were the result of a compromise and do not accomplish all of the goals that the industry had sought to achieve when it commenced litigation against BMI several years ago, they represent a real step forward for the industry and a real achievement for the Radio Music License Committee and the stations, whose interests we represent.