Man I'm sick of hearing this particular complaint.
Let's look at the numbers. 1M plays for ~$42. Sounds like not much right? Wrong.
Yes AM/RM Radio paid ~$1500 but for 20,000 plays. Now ask yourself this question: how many people heard those 20,000 plays? If the rate of pay was the same ($42/1M) it would have to be 35.7M listens. Well, at 20,000 radio plays that averages 1800 people per listen. Is the likely audience higher or lower than this number? It's bound to be higher. So streaming services are in fact paying more (per listen per listener).
I think part of what drives the complaint is that a song being on Spotify is much more valuable to the listener than it being on the radio. There's a spectrum of value ranging from the radio at the bottom (you are subject to the whims of the DJ on when and where you hear the song), to Pandora (you still aren't in complete control, but you have a lot of influence), to Spotify (you are in complete control as long as the song remains on Spotify), to owning the song on an album or as a DRM-free download (you are in complete control forever).
I think since Spotify is so much closer to owning an album than it is to radio, many artists expect it to be closer in value to album sales than radio plays.
Not saying ignorance of the proper comparison isn't happening, just that it might not be the only reason.
I own radio stations. We pay about $0.50 per song played in music rights fees over the course of a year.
Those 20,000 plays are worth a solid $8k to $12k in music fees. (my stations are about industry average in terms of sales; rights fees are based on a % of sales, so the fees can be dramatically higher in sum for a large metro station)
Bottom line, musicians are getting screwed across the board. The music rights companies are collecting much higher fees from the streaming services than they do for radio stations (music radio stations will typically pay 10% to 15% of their sales to music rights; depending on the bracket their sales fall into), but the point that remains the same is that the musicians are getting chump change out of the deals.
Lets look at this a different way because comparing to broadcast radio is dicey.
I pay for Pandora One. It costs me $36 dollars a year. Assuming all songs are exactly 3 minutes long & I listen 24/7 for an entire year...
((42 U.S. dollars) / (1 million * 3 minutes)) * (1 year) ~= $7.36
That doesn't seem like a bad deal, 1/5 of my yearly fee going to the artist, the rest to operation and profit of Pandora.
... the thing is, I don't listen to Pandora 24/7. At best I listen a few hours a day, on average for a whole year maybe an hour a day. With that, the ratio drags down to 1/100 of my yearly fee. Once cent of every dollar I spend on a music service ends of going to the actual musicians? That sucks.
Maybe the license fees go more to groups above the artist that don't deserve it, maybe Pandora's operating expenses eat up most of the pie... I don't know who to blame for the situation, I just know it's rigged against the people actually creating the music.
And this is why pirates don't feel bad about copying music. When it is damn near impossible to consume music without 99% of the cost going to the distributors, why should anyone feel bad using distribution systems which don't charge?
Buy physical music from local shops and go to shows and buy tickets from local distributors. (I'm lucky to live in a place where I _can_ see top shelf music without paying the Ticketmaster ransom) Especially buy swag at these shows if you're really interested in your money getting to the people who deserve it. Otherwise, it seems pretty clear that any other way of 'legitimately' buying music pays nearly everything to the middle man.
You may be sick of hearing the complaint, but the real problem is that the complainers are misinformed.
Sounds like Pandora needs to put real pressure on getting those reports revised to be clearer. It's unwise to be hated by the industry that you depend upon.
People do forget that the older markets were smaller, more controlled so more people were funneled through them such as radio. Services like Pandora, Spotify and even iTunes are really better in nailing down real listens and tracking much better (who knows how many true listeners there were really in the past other than Nielsen type predictions) but also there were less avenues to get content so it was more valuable to get on there.
It is the same problem in games with the previously distinct console markets where you can get more per game because there are less options. Now there are tons of options and it is about bigger user base at a lower per sku revenue take.
The internet based services are more open and there are more of them vying for your attention (which is good) but that you need to do more amazing things to stand out than before.
The controlled markets like radio, movie distribution, consoles (sort of -- Xbone from next gen) since they are controlled/limited and the costs are higher to get on them, they to get bigger takes. But they aren't necessarily better. Many artists, movies, games aren't seen on those or would even be possible if they were still tightly controlled and limited markets. It doesn't make it easier to succeed, it adds more competition and they end up being bigger markets but there is less exclusivity to it. In the end this is good I believe but artists that would never have been seen for instance can now actually be seen at least in access and not locked out. An artist can now get verifiable tracking counts as well as before a station might cheat them like a publisher might do in books/games since it is estimated or trusted to the publisher/stations to report correct plays.
Wait what? $1,500 for 20,000 plays? If the average song is 4 minutes long[1] that's 55 days of continuous music. So, a radio station that played non-stop music, 24/7 for a year is going to pay just under $10,000 total in royalties.. for a year.
That's pretty amazing, but I guess it's a matter of supply and demand: there's an awful lot of music (and a lot of it is awful).
Artists need to quit thinking of Spotify/Pandora as revenue generators and more as advertisement for 1) live peformances and 2) quality physical goods (nicely pressed vinyl, for example).
The days of radio-only hits are over (or close to being over).
Also, radio stations only play your song for a couple seasons, an entire year if you are lucky and maybe more if you are one of the most successful bands. Pandora and similar services are always around 24/7.
The solution to the problem is right in the blog title:
... "Less Than What I Make From a Single T-Shirt Sale!"
If you are good enough (and lucky enough) to get your music heard a million times, then use it as a platform to sell real, tangible things to the people that enjoy your music.
The conversion factor you're using is completely invented, though, extrapolated from the current rates. The fact is that internet radio provides census precision for playcounts, which (I and some others think) should make those listens more valuable. In another sense, listeners are effectively filling out a survey for each play, giving the stations more information about their listeners, but the stations are keeping all the value for themselves. Even though there's an orthogonal problem of royalty rates that the stations labor under, this setup is more of the same.
Each play in Pandora is only listened by one and only one person. Each play in terrestrial broadcasts is listened by potentially thousands of people, depending on the demographics of the covering areas. So it is uni-cast vs broadcast.
If the OP understands the difference, has a reasonable estimate on the number of listeners for broadcasts, and is reasonably good at calculation, he would find out that Pandora actually pays more.
Plus, Pandora provides more and better services to the listeners for the artists than terrestrial broadcasts. A simpel example. I am working and listening to Pandora. A nice song catches my ears. I could immediately look at the song, its album, the artists, and all other related information. Terrestrial broadcasts don't provide such a service. So Pandora is providing a deeper and more comprehensive marketing for the artists than terrestrial broadcasts, and it reaches more diverse population. That is a big benefit that the OP does not consider.
I find it interesting that SV is normally in favor of capitalism and free markets, yet some seem tolerant of the government forcing content owners to license their content at a fixed price.
There is often more inovation in a space when the market participates are left to decide on their own what to do.
An average radio audience of 1800 is not as low as you think.
1 M people within range of the average radio station /
10 radio stations per market *
5% of the time the average person spends listening to music radio
=
5000
I am not any sort of industry expert, and I could conceive of my numbers being off by a factor of 10. My point is that I don't think you can dismiss out of hand the chance that radio stations are getting fewer than 1800 pairs of ears per play.
indeed. i am also equally sick of hearing this complaint. tho, it's for a different reason.
music is not a freakin' product, people. it's a service. musicians are PERFORMERS. outside of the last 60 years or so, there was no such thing as "selling music" where you're not talking about sheet music. musicians get paid for performing.
the last 60 years has been a music bubble. welcome to the correction.
I don't mean to sound contentious.. but, uh, why is OP surprised? Music access quickly becoming a commodity. Pandora/Spotify do for music what Netflix did for movies. I mean, even Southpark did a show on this (viz. Blockbuster).
I'd say that the fact that the FM station paid OP 100x more than Pandora shows how hugely the FM/AM business models have failed and how for granted so many artists took being massively rich. Guess what, there are tons of talented people out there. Software is free, and everyone can compete. I'd say that's healthy. We're no longer stuck in the dark ages of information discovery (back when if something wasn't on the radio or on TV, no one had heard of it).
Also, ngoel36 said: "If your song stream convinced nobody to buy your song on iTunes or buy a ticket to your concerts, then you have bigger problems than Pandora."
This times a million. So your music is apparently awesome but you can't sell t-shirts or concert tickets (concerts are, after all, where the the real money is made).
"Why doesn’t Pandora get off the couch and get an actual business model instead of asking for a handout from congress and artists?"
Pandora and Spotify can do a lot more for bands by helping them plan tours, sell tickets to shows, and connect with fans. They could also help venues book and promote acts with known local followings.
There are hundreds of thousands of people who heard that song, like that type of music, and would consider attending a show and spending real money to get in. They might buy a tshirt too. Pandora could notify listeners when the shows come up, and help bands plan their tours to towns with more fans.
It could be real revenue for the bands, and for Pandora.
EDIT: Doesn't even mean a UI change, could be done with ad retargeting, or any performance marketing mechanism.
Wow, that is so sad. One million plays is pretty crappy. Consider that there are 70M active subscribers [1] that means 1 in 7 of them may have listened to your song exactly once. And for the low price of $16.49 a million people have heard your song, where as before nobody had heard it.
Now go look at your iTunes sales, how many copies of that song have you sold? 10? 100? 1000? How many of those sales occurred because people heard your song on Pandora, who won't play specific songs on command, and so they wanted to hear it again on their time?
Back in the bad old payola days you would have paid much more than that just to have your song even on the freakin' radio. Because that was the cost of letting other people hear your music and come to the conclusion they wanted to buy it.
+SiriusXM plays "commercials" on channels where clearchannel has an interest (KISS, etc.) Clear channel was an early investor in XM to insulate them from the threat of satellite radio vs FM networks (which they own a large share of)
+Streaming networks like Pandora and Spotify actually pay more per stream then SiriusXM does because satellite radio pays the Terrestrial (FM/AM) radio rates.
+The Math on this is confusing because a Terrestrial (FM/AM) station might pay $50 royalty to play a song but 200,000 people listened to it when it was broadcast.
The author didn’t state that nobody buys his songs on iTunes. And just because Apple pays artists well, is that a justification for Spotify to pay peanuts? “I see you can pay your rent this month. Good, then you won’t be needing my money!”
Not every musician wants to tour (often a very expensive venture), and even those who do can't cover 100% of the globe. Further there are so many streaming options now that actual purchases are becoming somewhat of a relic.
It is incredibly cheap to dictate the business models of others. Are you a software developer? How about you do that for free then and maybe you can do like training classes or something and you can make all of your money on that. I hear that's where the programming economy is going.
Music doesn't have the value it once did. End of story. Why are we dwelling on this? There isn't going to be a magic way to increase the value of music.
I don't mean to be heartless, but this makes sense to me.
By design, people aren't supposed to ean real revenue from their music on Pandora. It's more about exposure, isn't it?
I mean, the supply and demand of it doesn't work out in the artists' favor, only in Pandora's. No one can find your song or you specifically, so why would you have an opportunity to earn a lot of money? There's no demand for you or your work, just work in a certain genre that you might fulfill for a few minutes.
Again, I don't mean to be harsh, but it seems like it makes sense in Pandora's case. I think it would be more reasonable to expect some benefits to exposure and fame than expect revenue. Users aren't exactly incentivized to click that (admittedly tiny) buy button under the song.
> "Here’s an idea! Play two minutes of commercials and double your revenue!"
If they could actually sell two minutes of commercials, I'm pretty sure they would.
Expecting them to match the rates paid by massive existing media companies is essentially wishing the startups who finally got traction in this niche, back out of the picture and the entire market back to the business models and rate of technological progress that those massive existing players deem sufficiently non-threatening to their broadcast businesses.
I have sympathy for the author. I really do. But the problem ought not be simplified down to "Pandora should pay what Sirius pays".
(Though it makes me wonder what rates the larger tech companies are paying, now that they're making similar offerings.)
I've always viewed Pandora, Spotify and services like that as discovery services. They let me hear the music before parting with a more money. If I find an artist that I really like I'll buy their album or some merchandise.
Given the breadth of music I get from Pandora there's no way I'd be able to afford every album of every artist I listen to on the off chance I might like them.
Also you need to remember that a lot of people won't have the disposable income to buy albums, tshirts or subscribe to satellite radio, so that money from Pandora isn't going to be replaced.
Yes it's not much, but there's more to it than that number alone.
What this is missing is the amount of listeners each play counts for. On Pandora/Spotify/Youtube, a 'play' is typically one listener. For these, it's mainly worth noting that Spotify is about an order of magnitude more profitable per play ($1e-4 vs $1e-5).
Sirius is at ~$1/play, commercial radio is $0.07/play.
For Sirius XM, the breakeven number of listeners/play for the pricing structure to be comparable to Pandora is 70K. For Commercial Radio, the breakeven number of listeners/play is 5,000.
FYI people, the author is David Lowery, lead singer/songwriter of Cracker. The song is "Low".
I like the song and you probably did too, if you ever heard it. It was used in The Perks of Being a Wallflower last year.
It does strike me that many people may be under 20 and this song might actually be older than they are. So I will assume the ignorance is genuine rather than flippant.
"For you civilians webcasting rates are “compulsory” rates. They are set by the government (crazy, right?). Further since they are compulsory royalties, artists can not “opt out” of a service like Pandora even if they think Pandora doesn’t pay them enough. The majority of songwriters have their rates set by the government, too, in the form of the ASCAP and BMI rate courts–a single judge gets to decide the fate of songwriters (technically not a “compulsory” but may as well be)."
This bothers me. Why should the government regulate payments for music? Why shouldn't a musician have the option of licensing his music to radio stations but not to Pandora? We in the U.S. claim to have a system based on free enterprise, but this is very far away from that.
It's almost like he doesn't realize Pandora is paying him much much per listener than radio is. So much so that Pandora loses money anytime someone listens to a song. That's not enough though, run even more ads, pay even more than the already higher fees.
These numbers are weird, I had a completely different experience. I have 440,000 plays on Spotify of songs from my album, and I've made $2420 off of that.
I've been working on http://busker.fm. It aims to be the fair way to stream music. We not only give artists 100% of album-sales, we encourage album-sales by incorporating discovery, streaming, and the purchase itself.
Some helpful feedback:
Right now the service looks pretty vanilla, but I want to check out the music. There's already a barrier: a sign up wall.
Why am I going to to sign up? I don't see much motive to sign up when there's so many services that I can browse without having to login (bandcamp, soundcloud, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Last.fm, Pandora, Slacker Radio, Songza... you get the idea).
Listeners should be put front and center as they are the main course, your service should appeal to the consumer so they'll actually make the platform viable for the musicians.
Right now I don't know what it is I'm signing for: be it a musician or listener. It could be the greatest service ever but from the page, I cannot tell. Give demos, show me something.
I'd agree with the commenter above - there's surely no need to be quite so coy about what you're offering. A casual visitor to the site isn't exactly going to be reeled in by an immediate requirement to hand over details, although perhaps your data says otherwise.
Bonus points if purchases can be in at least CD quality, or even better. (HD storage is cheap - do we really need to be all that concerned about the relative merits of lossy audio codecs, at this point?)
[+] [-] cletus|12 years ago|reply
Let's look at the numbers. 1M plays for ~$42. Sounds like not much right? Wrong.
Yes AM/RM Radio paid ~$1500 but for 20,000 plays. Now ask yourself this question: how many people heard those 20,000 plays? If the rate of pay was the same ($42/1M) it would have to be 35.7M listens. Well, at 20,000 radio plays that averages 1800 people per listen. Is the likely audience higher or lower than this number? It's bound to be higher. So streaming services are in fact paying more (per listen per listener).
See http://davidtouve.com/2011/12/13/uk-radio-versus-spotify-a-c...
[+] [-] DanielStraight|12 years ago|reply
I think since Spotify is so much closer to owning an album than it is to radio, many artists expect it to be closer in value to album sales than radio plays.
Not saying ignorance of the proper comparison isn't happening, just that it might not be the only reason.
[+] [-] adventured|12 years ago|reply
Those 20,000 plays are worth a solid $8k to $12k in music fees. (my stations are about industry average in terms of sales; rights fees are based on a % of sales, so the fees can be dramatically higher in sum for a large metro station)
Bottom line, musicians are getting screwed across the board. The music rights companies are collecting much higher fees from the streaming services than they do for radio stations (music radio stations will typically pay 10% to 15% of their sales to music rights; depending on the bracket their sales fall into), but the point that remains the same is that the musicians are getting chump change out of the deals.
[+] [-] colechristensen|12 years ago|reply
I pay for Pandora One. It costs me $36 dollars a year. Assuming all songs are exactly 3 minutes long & I listen 24/7 for an entire year...
((42 U.S. dollars) / (1 million * 3 minutes)) * (1 year) ~= $7.36
That doesn't seem like a bad deal, 1/5 of my yearly fee going to the artist, the rest to operation and profit of Pandora.
... the thing is, I don't listen to Pandora 24/7. At best I listen a few hours a day, on average for a whole year maybe an hour a day. With that, the ratio drags down to 1/100 of my yearly fee. Once cent of every dollar I spend on a music service ends of going to the actual musicians? That sucks.
Maybe the license fees go more to groups above the artist that don't deserve it, maybe Pandora's operating expenses eat up most of the pie... I don't know who to blame for the situation, I just know it's rigged against the people actually creating the music.
And this is why pirates don't feel bad about copying music. When it is damn near impossible to consume music without 99% of the cost going to the distributors, why should anyone feel bad using distribution systems which don't charge?
Buy physical music from local shops and go to shows and buy tickets from local distributors. (I'm lucky to live in a place where I _can_ see top shelf music without paying the Ticketmaster ransom) Especially buy swag at these shows if you're really interested in your money getting to the people who deserve it. Otherwise, it seems pretty clear that any other way of 'legitimately' buying music pays nearly everything to the middle man.
[+] [-] paulsutter|12 years ago|reply
Sounds like Pandora needs to put real pressure on getting those reports revised to be clearer. It's unwise to be hated by the industry that you depend upon.
[+] [-] drawkbox|12 years ago|reply
It is the same problem in games with the previously distinct console markets where you can get more per game because there are less options. Now there are tons of options and it is about bigger user base at a lower per sku revenue take.
The internet based services are more open and there are more of them vying for your attention (which is good) but that you need to do more amazing things to stand out than before.
The controlled markets like radio, movie distribution, consoles (sort of -- Xbone from next gen) since they are controlled/limited and the costs are higher to get on them, they to get bigger takes. But they aren't necessarily better. Many artists, movies, games aren't seen on those or would even be possible if they were still tightly controlled and limited markets. It doesn't make it easier to succeed, it adds more competition and they end up being bigger markets but there is less exclusivity to it. In the end this is good I believe but artists that would never have been seen for instance can now actually be seen at least in access and not locked out. An artist can now get verifiable tracking counts as well as before a station might cheat them like a publisher might do in books/games since it is estimated or trusted to the publisher/stations to report correct plays.
[+] [-] polemic|12 years ago|reply
That's pretty amazing, but I guess it's a matter of supply and demand: there's an awful lot of music (and a lot of it is awful).
1. http://a-candle-in-the-dark.blogspot.co.nz/2010/02/song-leng...
[+] [-] warfangle|12 years ago|reply
The days of radio-only hits are over (or close to being over).
[+] [-] McPants|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jobu|12 years ago|reply
... "Less Than What I Make From a Single T-Shirt Sale!"
If you are good enough (and lucky enough) to get your music heard a million times, then use it as a platform to sell real, tangible things to the people that enjoy your music.
[+] [-] rhizome|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesli|12 years ago|reply
If the OP understands the difference, has a reasonable estimate on the number of listeners for broadcasts, and is reasonably good at calculation, he would find out that Pandora actually pays more.
Plus, Pandora provides more and better services to the listeners for the artists than terrestrial broadcasts. A simpel example. I am working and listening to Pandora. A nice song catches my ears. I could immediately look at the song, its album, the artists, and all other related information. Terrestrial broadcasts don't provide such a service. So Pandora is providing a deeper and more comprehensive marketing for the artists than terrestrial broadcasts, and it reaches more diverse population. That is a big benefit that the OP does not consider.
<edit> grammer
[+] [-] timberlane|12 years ago|reply
There is often more inovation in a space when the market participates are left to decide on their own what to do.
[+] [-] cmsmith|12 years ago|reply
1 M people within range of the average radio station /
10 radio stations per market *
5% of the time the average person spends listening to music radio
=
5000
I am not any sort of industry expert, and I could conceive of my numbers being off by a factor of 10. My point is that I don't think you can dismiss out of hand the chance that radio stations are getting fewer than 1800 pairs of ears per play.
[+] [-] mehwoot|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3mnoch|12 years ago|reply
music is not a freakin' product, people. it's a service. musicians are PERFORMERS. outside of the last 60 years or so, there was no such thing as "selling music" where you're not talking about sheet music. musicians get paid for performing.
the last 60 years has been a music bubble. welcome to the correction.
m3mnoch.
[+] [-] anigbrowl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dvt|12 years ago|reply
I'd say that the fact that the FM station paid OP 100x more than Pandora shows how hugely the FM/AM business models have failed and how for granted so many artists took being massively rich. Guess what, there are tons of talented people out there. Software is free, and everyone can compete. I'd say that's healthy. We're no longer stuck in the dark ages of information discovery (back when if something wasn't on the radio or on TV, no one had heard of it).
Also, ngoel36 said: "If your song stream convinced nobody to buy your song on iTunes or buy a ticket to your concerts, then you have bigger problems than Pandora."
This times a million. So your music is apparently awesome but you can't sell t-shirts or concert tickets (concerts are, after all, where the the real money is made).
"Why doesn’t Pandora get off the couch and get an actual business model instead of asking for a handout from congress and artists?"
I mean, this is just laughable, given how heavily the media industry is subsidized. Case in point: http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/05/07/the-government-is-no...
[+] [-] paulsutter|12 years ago|reply
There are hundreds of thousands of people who heard that song, like that type of music, and would consider attending a show and spending real money to get in. They might buy a tshirt too. Pandora could notify listeners when the shows come up, and help bands plan their tours to towns with more fans.
It could be real revenue for the bands, and for Pandora.
EDIT: Doesn't even mean a UI change, could be done with ad retargeting, or any performance marketing mechanism.
[+] [-] soupboy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|12 years ago|reply
Now go look at your iTunes sales, how many copies of that song have you sold? 10? 100? 1000? How many of those sales occurred because people heard your song on Pandora, who won't play specific songs on command, and so they wanted to hear it again on their time?
Back in the bad old payola days you would have paid much more than that just to have your song even on the freakin' radio. Because that was the cost of letting other people hear your music and come to the conclusion they wanted to buy it.
[1] http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/05/pandora-reports-70m-a...
[+] [-] ryangripp|12 years ago|reply
+Streaming networks like Pandora and Spotify actually pay more per stream then SiriusXM does because satellite radio pays the Terrestrial (FM/AM) radio rates.
+The Math on this is confusing because a Terrestrial (FM/AM) station might pay $50 royalty to play a song but 200,000 people listened to it when it was broadcast.
[+] [-] ngoel36|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Samuel_Michon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corresation|12 years ago|reply
It is incredibly cheap to dictate the business models of others. Are you a software developer? How about you do that for free then and maybe you can do like training classes or something and you can make all of your money on that. I hear that's where the programming economy is going.
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylangs1030|12 years ago|reply
By design, people aren't supposed to ean real revenue from their music on Pandora. It's more about exposure, isn't it?
I mean, the supply and demand of it doesn't work out in the artists' favor, only in Pandora's. No one can find your song or you specifically, so why would you have an opportunity to earn a lot of money? There's no demand for you or your work, just work in a certain genre that you might fulfill for a few minutes.
Again, I don't mean to be harsh, but it seems like it makes sense in Pandora's case. I think it would be more reasonable to expect some benefits to exposure and fame than expect revenue. Users aren't exactly incentivized to click that (admittedly tiny) buy button under the song.
[+] [-] roc|12 years ago|reply
If they could actually sell two minutes of commercials, I'm pretty sure they would.
Expecting them to match the rates paid by massive existing media companies is essentially wishing the startups who finally got traction in this niche, back out of the picture and the entire market back to the business models and rate of technological progress that those massive existing players deem sufficiently non-threatening to their broadcast businesses.
I have sympathy for the author. I really do. But the problem ought not be simplified down to "Pandora should pay what Sirius pays".
(Though it makes me wonder what rates the larger tech companies are paying, now that they're making similar offerings.)
[+] [-] abtinf|12 years ago|reply
$1373.78 / (18797 * 10000) * 1000000 = $7.31
Now lets do the math for Pandora:
$ 16.89 / 1159000 * 1 000 000 = $14.57
So this writer is ACTUALLY COMPLAINING that Pandora merely pays DOUBLE the royalty rate of terrestrial radio.
[+] [-] smackfu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucisferre|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sitharus|12 years ago|reply
Given the breadth of music I get from Pandora there's no way I'd be able to afford every album of every artist I listen to on the off chance I might like them.
Also you need to remember that a lot of people won't have the disposable income to buy albums, tshirts or subscribe to satellite radio, so that money from Pandora isn't going to be replaced.
Yes it's not much, but there's more to it than that number alone.
[+] [-] yardie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hindsightbias|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psgibbs|12 years ago|reply
Sirius is at ~$1/play, commercial radio is $0.07/play.
For Sirius XM, the breakeven number of listeners/play for the pricing structure to be comparable to Pandora is 70K. For Commercial Radio, the breakeven number of listeners/play is 5,000.
*edit: added the price/play numbers
[+] [-] msg|12 years ago|reply
I like the song and you probably did too, if you ever heard it. It was used in The Perks of Being a Wallflower last year.
It does strike me that many people may be under 20 and this song might actually be older than they are. So I will assume the ignorance is genuine rather than flippant.
http://www.crackersoul.com/fr_home.cfm
[+] [-] greenyoda|12 years ago|reply
This bothers me. Why should the government regulate payments for music? Why shouldn't a musician have the option of licensing his music to radio stations but not to Pandora? We in the U.S. claim to have a system based on free enterprise, but this is very far away from that.
[+] [-] jonknee|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weisser|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeformed|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aqme28|12 years ago|reply
I've been working on http://busker.fm. It aims to be the fair way to stream music. We not only give artists 100% of album-sales, we encourage album-sales by incorporating discovery, streaming, and the purchase itself.
[+] [-] fuzzywalrus|12 years ago|reply
Why am I going to to sign up? I don't see much motive to sign up when there's so many services that I can browse without having to login (bandcamp, soundcloud, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Last.fm, Pandora, Slacker Radio, Songza... you get the idea).
Listeners should be put front and center as they are the main course, your service should appeal to the consumer so they'll actually make the platform viable for the musicians.
Right now I don't know what it is I'm signing for: be it a musician or listener. It could be the greatest service ever but from the page, I cannot tell. Give demos, show me something.
[+] [-] porsupah|12 years ago|reply
Bonus points if purchases can be in at least CD quality, or even better. (HD storage is cheap - do we really need to be all that concerned about the relative merits of lossy audio codecs, at this point?)