Listeners can call the Swine Line (724-PORK) to leave announcements of everything from local doings to refrigerators for sale. These Hog Calls are interspersed with songs on the air, while an active online chat room offers a forum to post Squeals. Participating businesses offer discounts to holders of Lard Cards. Images from the Ham Cam, a Web camera showing the deejays at work, can be viewed on the station's Web site.
Going online was the handiwork of Bill Goldsmith, who spent $5,000 of his own money to set up the system when he was a deejay at KPIG. Goldsmith now runs RadioParadise, his own Internet-only station.
"We didn't even know quite what he was doing," said program manager Laura Hopper.
Hopper said the music industry is hurting itself by its hard-line stance.
"Our listeners buy CDs," she said from the KPIG studio in a two-story, motel-like structure behind a Chinese restaurant and next to a car dealership. "They complain to me that by listening to KPIG, they've spent more money on CDs than ever."
Indeed, part of the difficulty in resolving the royalty controversy is that there is disagreement even within the opposing sides.
Some artists, such as singer Janis Ian, oppose the digital royalty fees and the fierce opposition of the major record labels to music downloads.
"If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my wallet and check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing's missing," she wrote in an article in trade magazine in May.
Other performers have urged listeners to stop stealing their music.
One small record label, Artemis, announced two weeks ago that it would forgo royalty payments for a year, to provide struggling webcasters time to work on the issue.
"For one year, it's a no-brainer," said Artemis chief executive Danny Goldberg. "Our artists need the exposure . . . and what was clear to me is that these are small businesses that are helpful to my business."
On the other side, some radio broadcasters argue they should be treated differently than Internet-only stations. And the interests of larger technology and Internet companies pushing into the digital music arena, such as AOL Time Warner Inc. and Microsoft Corp., sometimes differ from those of smaller players.
Defining who qualifies for some type of small-webcaster license also will be tricky, said Jonathan Potter, head of the Digital Media Association, a industry trade group whose members include AOL, Microsoft and some larger Web broadcasters.
Should the threshold be based on station income? Number of listeners or songs streamed? And what's the cutoff?
"We're all trying to figure that out," Potter said.
