retroactive royalties

Ok, on my commute to work this morning I tuned into NPR to listen in for a bit and caught "The Market Report" on "Morning Edition". There was a report regarding streaming radio on the internet and the royalties paid by web sites to record labels. The royalties have steadily increased over the years and have even been enacted retroactively in some cases. This doesn't really cut into the profits of AOL, Yahoo etc.---they're rich--- but small sites, small business if you will is effectively cut out of market due to these practices. Where have we seen this before? The telegraph, Film, Radio network, Television networks, it seems that all of these industries have "suffered" similiary. What I think we can expect from the royalties issue is a consolidation of the market share of streaming radio.