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What Pandora Pays Top Artists

blog.pandora.com

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Re: What Pandora Pays Top Artists

#41

Post by earbitscom »

dorkrawk wrote: post #18

I wonder what % of each artist's total income these Pandora numbers represent. Is Pandora (or any other streaming service) a sustaining financial source for many of these artists when compared to music sales, touring, licencing, etc. or is it just a drop in the bucket?

The primary factors in this are how much they get played, whether they're on a label, and how many people are in their band. The performance royalty is based on number of streams, split 50% to the label, then 50% cut between all performers on the recording. A 10-piece band of percussionists, on a label, getting played in new age isn't going to make much.

Re: What Pandora Pays Top Artists

#42

Post by earbitscom »

alexshipillo wrote: post #4
simondlr wrote: post #2

That seems more than I expected? Then again, don't quite know what the going for streaming revenue is.

Yes, it's way more than I expected. I wonder how sustainable it is...

It's not. That's why Pandora is fighting for their life right now. They can't get big investors to keep backing them until they get the law changed. They're in very deep.

Re: What Pandora Pays Top Artists

#43

Post by pkulak »

pasbesoin wrote: post #16

Pandora: Is there a reason the image on this blog post is so large? This one image, resized in the browser to 300x200, is consuming 2+ MB. Namely, this one: I've been noticing the resurgence of browser-based resizing of large images on a few different business blogs/formats, recently. In this case (and some others), the resize is to much less than 1/4 the original, so I'm thinking it's not a "Retina" thing. Maybe it'…

They are probably just not familiar with bandwidth costs... wait...

Re: What Pandora Pays Top Artists

#44

Post by baddox »

jimmar wrote: post #19
imtyler wrote: post #13

This is probably going to end up being a controversial opinion, but I just don't think music is worth that much anymore (fiscally speaking). Sure, there was a time when being popular meant signing a contract-- it was the only way to distribute your music on a large scale. Radio and physical copies were the only way to hear music, period. But these days with the internet and the right software practically anyone can c…

Give me all of the top music software in the world and I won't be able to create anything worth listening to. Your statement is kind of like saying since word processing software and electronic distribution are widely available, books really aren't worth the price tag. It's the creativity and hard work that goes into books and music that makes it worth the price--not the cost of the distribution medium.

But it's pretty clear that the cost of the distribution medium was a significant portion of the cost consumers paid prior to the Internet Age.

Re: What Pandora Pays Top Artists

#45

Post by rprasad »

thasmin wrote: post #33
dkrich wrote: post #29

I use Pandora and love the product. But every time I see this commercial with Tim Westergren where he states that the royalty system for internet radio is "deeply unfair" I can't help but wonder why he believes that to be true. Where is it written that all distributors should pay the same price for their wares? Wal-Mart pays Proctor and Gamble a significantly lower cost than small grocers. Why? Because Wal-Mart, quit…

The difference is that your example is in a free market and music royalty rates are controlled by Congress.

The royalty rates are controlled by Congress precisely to allow for services like Pandora to exist until the internet music market can reach bargaining parity on par with other music markets (i.e., radio, etc.) Without those rate limits, the RIAA would charge many multiples of the current royalty rates.

Re: What Pandora Pays Top Artists

#46

Post by sopooneo »

If they wanted, could Pandora avoid interacting with record companies completely? That is, only buy music direct from artists? And if they did this, could they then just negotiate whatever deals they wanted with the artists?

I am not implying that this would be economically feasible for them, just curious if there is any reason it absolutely couldn't be done

Re: What Pandora Pays Top Artists

#47

Post by bo1024 »

rm999 wrote: post #27
pasbesoin wrote: post #16

Pandora: Is there a reason the image on this blog post is so large? This one image, resized in the browser to 300x200, is consuming 2+ MB. Namely, this one: I've been noticing the resurgence of browser-based resizing of large images on a few different business blogs/formats, recently. In this case (and some others), the resize is to much less than 1/4 the original, so I'm thinking it's not a "Retina" thing. Maybe it'…

Probably an oversight. I usually surf on 30+ mbps connections, so if I were testing a site I wouldn't notice it.

It's a bit different when your job is to make a website.

Re: What Pandora Pays Top Artists

#48

Post by MiguelHudnandez »

pasbesoin wrote: post #16

Pandora: Is there a reason the image on this blog post is so large? This one image, resized in the browser to 300x200, is consuming 2+ MB. Namely, this one: I've been noticing the resurgence of browser-based resizing of large images on a few different business blogs/formats, recently. In this case (and some others), the resize is to much less than 1/4 the original, so I'm thinking it's not a "Retina" thing. Maybe it'…

This happens all the time, all over the web. It's because interns or non-webdev staff often don't know they should resize a file before uploading it and attaching it to a post. So they'll upload a JPG right from a camera's memory card and use the WYSIWYG editor to set its dimensions. The worst are when images like this are referenced within broadcast e-mail messages. Luckily you can swap the file out on disk without inconveniencing future readers.

I wrote an image API at my place of work to take a file by name and accept dimensions in the query string. It resizes the image, caches the file on disk, at and serves the smaller file. However, it's tough to integrate that API with every little WYSIWYG editor we have, so sometimes we still serve up large files in this way.

Usually, intentional retina-quality images have plenty of telltale signs (like the @2x naming convention).

Re: What Pandora Pays Top Artists

#49

Post by derekp7 »

sopooneo wrote: post #46

If they wanted, could Pandora avoid interacting with record companies completely? That is, only buy music direct from artists? And if they did this, could they then just negotiate whatever deals they wanted with the artists? I am not implying that this would be economically feasible for them, just curious if there is any reason it absolutely couldn't be done

The problem is that most artists that the majority of people want to listen to have already signed exclusive contracts with one of the record labels. And they did that because of the initial value of promotion by the record label (it's almost impossible to get radio airplay without a record label).

Re: What Pandora Pays Top Artists

#50

Post by joelrunyon »

earbitscom wrote: post #38
steve19 wrote: post #5

An artist with a sales rank of 17,000 on Amazon is making $138,567 on Pandora! Wow! I wonder how much Pandora makes (or loses) on that artist.

That's because Pandora only has about a million songs in their catalog, where iTunes has like 30 million. All Pandora has to do, and you better believe they did in order to write an article like this, is classify an unknown artist that sounds like Coldplay into the system. If you've experienced Pandora, you know that after a few weeks you hear the same music over and over on any given channel. Suffice it to say, acro…

How many total artists do those million songs translate into?
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