I don't know about elsewhere, but in Britain commercial radio stations have to pay a certain percentage of their turnover to the music licensing bodies. It work

I don't know about elsewhere, but in Britain commercial radio stations have to pay a certain percentage of their turnover to the music licensing bodies. It works out at about 6-10% depending on the size of the station, and it doesn't help that we have two bodies doing slightly different things and both taking their 3-5% cut, plus extra fees if you want to simulcast online or via satellite or do anything vaguely innovative in the vein of Last.fm or Pandora. And god forbid anyone include commercial music in podcasts! The amounts internet stations pay are peanuts compared to the hundreds of thousands going out of FM/AM stations, particularly those which are trying to use tech to become more than just FM/AM stations.