Licence fees are payable for every public performance - if a radio station (or restaurant, elevator etc.) plays recorded music then a few cents for each song is supposed to be paid to the appropriate performance rights organization: BMI, ASCAP, SOCAN. These agencies then distribute a portion of fees back to the recording artists. It's a lossy system - most of the money gets skimmed off - but at least the people who create the music get a little bit of the cash.
The new fees are not levied for the sake of the artists. These fees are specific to digital music, and do not apply to broadcast stations (even if broadcasting digitally). The digital performance fees apply fairly specifically to Internet radio and are collected by an agency called SoundExchange, which is essentially a group of lawyers fronting for the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
These fees don't go to the artists: they go to the "copyright holder" which is almost always the recording label (Sony Columbia, Warner, EMI).
The labels are specifically targeting Internet radio - and, by extension, your legal right (in the USA) - to control and prevent digital transmission of any recorded material. The next step will be to disable any type of in-the-home digital transmission (using Sonos or any other media bridge) unless transaction fees are paid. This is the whole point of the HDCP "copy protection" in the HDMI interface - to limit where, when, how often (and eventually why, who and what) media gets played: it will all be licenced and fee payable.
Internet 2.0 indeed; American laws want to take us back fifty years and they will probably succeed.
I wonder how the publicly funded Canadian radio stations CBC and Espace Musique (two of my main feeds, SQ is better in packets then over the air) will react. The new fees appear to affect all Internet music streams terminating in the US, and even though low-volume "non-commercial" webcasters get a break any site with more than about 15k listeners per month will have to pay premium rates.
Another case of a politicians and lobbyists extending special-interest protection via legislation across international borders.
