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Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays

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Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays

#101

Post by _delirium »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #93
route66 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what channel you are listening to, but in general there have always been musicians (and bands) writing their own music as there were have always been musicians performing songs composed by others with lyrics written by others. Songwriting is about as dead as cooking.

From what I've seen, it depends on what you listen to. Pop, country, and R%B are largely written and produced by someone other than the performer (hence, they are called "acts"). Most rock/inde/actual "bands" will do their own writing 90% percent of the time.

With the fields dominated by acts, how people make a living gets even more convoluted. Some songwriters who regularly work in-house for a label get paid "advances" that are really more like salaries (regular monthly payments, sometimes considerably higher than the expected royalties). That's especially common for career songwriters in-house at places like Nashville. Young pop or hip-hop songwriters hoping to use it as a stepping-stone to become an act themselves might not get paid a salary.

Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays

#102

Post by gohrt »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #15
gravitronic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really shitty golden goose.

Does that even matter? Since the marginal effort on the part of the performer is exactly zero? (which is to say they don't have to "do" anything to be on Pandora, they just collect checks from BMI/ASCAP). If a musician is arguing that they are being driven into poverty by poor royalties, losing them completely seems to make them worse off.

Your argument applies retrospectively to past creations, not prospectively to future creations.

Also, eliminating Pandora might (or might not) increase royalties via other media.

Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays

#103

Post by chinpokomon »

It seems the biggest problem is the metric used to establish royalties. Broadcast mediums like radio can't accurately account for how many listeners they have, and so their licensing terms are based on plays. Pandora on the other hand knows exactly how many listeners it had, because the stream is per individual, nit broadcast. Neither medium accounts for inactive listeners, but I would expect the distribution would be similar. The bottom line is that Pandora is closer to every individual having their own radio station and so of course you cannot evaluate their worth the same way, despite what the original article was trying to do.

Pandora's model actually works better for the artists, since there is metadata that could be used to spy on American citizens... whoops, wrong story; that could be used to connect to fans in markets the artist may not have had access to previously. Maybe Pandora should be selling that information to the artists and labels, although I don't know that they don't do that already.

Both radio and Pandora are more appropriately described as advertisement. Playback restrictions of both formats means that listening to something is not purely selective in the part of the listener. I can't request that Pandora play Cracker's Low, anymore than I can shout that request to my radio. However both give me exposure to music that I might not otherwise hear. Extra credit goes to Pandora for giving me easy access to the Artist, Album, and Song Title, as well as up sell links whereby I can purchase the music I'm listening to.

Pandora provides much more value than terrestrial broadcast - value for which the music industry should probably be paying Pandora. I fully appreciate the positron Pandora finds themselves in, but they aren't in a fair fight, and the artists that should be supporting them don't seem to understand that distinction for their own good.

Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays

#104

Post by k-mcgrady »

badclient wrote: post #94
k-mcgrady wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the music industry has a problem with streaming (Pink Floyd who started this renewed debate yesterday just got added to Spotify). The problem is that Pandora wants royalties cut - because their business model doesn't work. If they can't afford to distribute the product they need to raise prices or shut down. They can't make the producer look like the bad guy. Trying to get the producer to lower prices b…

Try to make the distributor pay you disproportionate to what consumers are willing to pay for your product(music) is fucking ridiculous.

Not when you have plenty of other avenues to get revenue from and cutting off this specific one own't have much impact on you.

Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays

#105

Post by ThomPete »

tunesmith wrote: post #91
ThomPete wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to make a living is not a right, it's an opportunity. The same opportunity that made it possible for artists to record once and resell in the millions is now working against them. Where where they when the distribution companies who used to make a living from the music industry was laid off? Or the record stores? It's not a right, it's an opportunity.

This is simplistic. Major labels still have the relationships which allow them to dictate favorable terms to these services that supposedly are so great for indies. These favorable terms mean that the services need onerous terms from the indies in order to break even. This effectively means the indies are subsidizing the major labels. That dynamic needs to change before we can argue that this meets some level of fair…

Thats a whole different discussion though.

Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays

#106

Post by ThomPete »

205guy wrote: post #96
ThomPete wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to make a living is not a right, it's an opportunity. The same opportunity that made it possible for artists to record once and resell in the millions is now working against them. Where where they when the distribution companies who used to make a living from the music industry was laid off? Or the record stores? It's not a right, it's an opportunity.

My point was we're trying to judge the merit of an entire system by one tiny facet. What's a fair amount of money for this guy to get if it's not X? What if I was a QA tester and I complained on my blog that my dev team was unfairly closing the bugs I open as invalid, thus depriving me of my bug-based bonus? Seems crummy, but maybe that just how the industry goes and I'm still living comfortably. Obviously, there is…

You last claim is simply not true. There have never in the history of human history been so many artists out there. If anything it's the amount of competition amongst musicians that is pushing the returns down.

Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays

#107

Post by route66 »

badclient wrote: post #94
k-mcgrady wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the music industry has a problem with streaming (Pink Floyd who started this renewed debate yesterday just got added to Spotify). The problem is that Pandora wants royalties cut - because their business model doesn't work. If they can't afford to distribute the product they need to raise prices or shut down. They can't make the producer look like the bad guy. Trying to get the producer to lower prices b…

Try to make the distributor pay you disproportionate to what consumers are willing to pay for your product(music) is fucking ridiculous.

Disproportionate would be more than 100%. As you said: the consumers are willing to pay a certain amount. A share of that amount can never be "disproportionate". Are you demanding the same humbleness of yourself when you negotiate your salary?

Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays

#108

Post by dllthomas »

ThomPete wrote: post #67
205guy wrote: post #57

What I think is missing from this whole discussion is the ability to make a living. Sure the industry is opaque to outsiders, and some of the established practices are weird (radio paying only songwriters, not performers), and now it's all being disrupted. But forget about the numbers for one song. Let's say a guy like the OP of the other article works full time as a singer song-writer. He writes a few songs, perform…

The ability to make a living is not a right, it's an opportunity. The same opportunity that made it possible for artists to record once and resell in the millions is now working against them. Where where they when the distribution companies who used to make a living from the music industry was laid off? Or the record stores? It's not a right, it's an opportunity.

What you say may be true, but it's only relevant to the question of what we do with that part of the discussion. It doesn't, by any means, mean it's not something we should be aware of.

Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays

#109

Post by route66 »

sliverstorm wrote: post #92
whiddershins wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguing that high royalties make it hard for Pandora to do business is just bullying and threatening. Obviously if sharing songs via violating copyright weren't an option, listeners would happily pay a little more for Pandora premium or endure a few more commercials. Instead, the public starts from the stance that music should basically be free, and artists are lucky to be paid anything at all. The purpose of statuto…

Arguing that high royalties make it hard for Pandora to do business is just bullying and threatening. Oh? If Pandora already spends half its revenues on the music, how is observing that doubling (for example) royalties would cause music costs to eclipse revenues, bullying and threatening? It sounds like Pandora is the one that should feel threatened.

Oh, but isn't that just a failure of their business model? If I can only survive by offering cakes for $5 and buying them for $1 the "threat" would be wholly self inflicted (At least, that is the song which is sung on HN to artists, the "too bad your business model sucks")

Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays

#110

Post by aston »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #99
aston wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why's the price matter? Any store that buys merchandise it can't sell at a profit is making a basic business mistake. Separately, to your point about unfairness, I suspect that both radio and internet streaming prices are lower than what the market would set if the government didn't intervene.

Remember, copyright exists for the public good. Would radio still exist if it paid significantly more than current internet prices instead of less? Would that be preferable to the current situation?

If, simultaneously, congress removed the compulsory licensing radio had to pay (or, alternately, raised it to match Pandora's on a per-listener basis) and the FCC also removed restrictions around Payola, record labels big and small would probably be happy to subsidize the difference for radio stations because radio (unlike Pandora) is super-effective at advertising higher-revenue-generating products like local concerts and physical CDs.
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