If, in order to have an Internet radio station, you needed to negotiate with the owner of every song you wanted to play, running such a station would be prohibi

If, in order to have an Internet radio station, you needed to negotiate with the owner of every song you wanted to play, running such a station would be prohibitively expensive. I think this can be solved using technology and micropayments. The artists could register their songs in some sort of online database, with the price they are willing to accept. This would make a free market where the artists could decide what their songs are worth. I don't think the artists in RIAA would be the first users of this database, but independent labels might be interested. An unknown artist could set a lower price to make their music more attractive for radio stations.