The Importance of Streaming       In searching the Internet for articles about royalty fees paid to artists, it didn't take long before my brain was in overdrive and my head was reeling.    Since it would take many more days and even more hours of searching, reading, rereading and trying to comprehend what I read, I am opting for some broad generalties about practices and trends in the music industry.     For an excellent overview of the processes and procedures in the industry, this article is one of the best I found:     How Music Royalties Work by Lee Ann Obringer   For keeping abreast of music industry news, the FMQB site is #1 for me:   The FMQB Site     As a fan, the most important conclusion I reached is that streaming music and videos from authorized sites which pay the artist through licensing fees or royalties per song is an important, and becoming even more important, way for fans to support their favorite artists.  You can do this by visiting the home page of an artist, by streaming music from such services as AOL, IMEEM, iLike or any similar service with which the artist is registered.  Likewise, official YouTube videos and Facebook, MySpace and similar networking services allow videos from sources such as MTV and VH1 to be embedded on your page.  As an example, I have embedded Elliott Yamin's latest video from both MTV and VH1 below.  When you watch the video from this page, you are linking to the particular service and a "play" is credited to the artist.  If the source for the video does not provide embedding code, often an option is added to use the link in other services.  Such is the case with the IHeartRadio service.     Check out Elliott Yamin's Videos   Fight for Love -- MTV Player Elliott Yamin - New Music - More Music Videos   Fight for Love -- VH1 Player   VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip     You can also view Fight for Love ( and I recommend that you do as it a product of Clear Channel Communications which owns many radio stations throughout the United States) through this link:   IHeartRadio Link for Fight For Love   If you use the above link, and click on the ADD button, you can link the video to many different web pages including MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter.