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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

#131

Post by whiddershins »

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.

How do we know what consumers are willing to pay? How do we know this is a fixed number and can't be altered by other factors?

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

#132

Post by Dewie »

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…

> and some of the established practices are weird (radio paying only songwriters, not performers), and now it's all being disrupted.

Might as well pay royalties to sound engineers and producers, for that matter. To me it is a question of whether or not someone was a dedicated member to the group or simply someone who was hired to do a set job. I mean, some musicians do all the songwriting and playing, some are hired to play a given sheet music verbatim, etc. The latter is not very different from a sound engineer who is hired to work on one album for a fixed hourly pay.

It's kind of interesting how the musicians are the heroes of the music world and always the one that are focused on when it comes to "fair pay" etc, but the world of music isn't simply divided into the working musicians and the record label suits. Some people have suggested donating to the musicians directly instead of buying their albums (opting to pirate them instead), and that works of course the band was behind financing the whole album. If they weren't, though, then it glosses over some of the other players...

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

#133

Post by gems »

whiddershins wrote: post #129
gems wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could say that playing one song is an advertisement for the album or for the artist. There are many artists I wouldn't have otherwise known about if it wasn't for pandora. "If you don't understand that, you shouldn't even participate in the conversation." This is childish. "If I can't conceive of any other perspective, then you shouldn't open your mouth!!!!"

Seriously, you can SAY a Honda Fit is an advertisement for Honda cars in general. But the car is still the product. Only with music. With no other product than music, do people in our culture so consistently rationalize getting one thing for free as exposure or advertising for some hypothetical other revenue stream that will one day happen down the line.

There are many things people might generalize about the brand from having experience with one instance of that brand. By driving a bmw, for example, you might get to experience the luxury offered by bmw-built cars.

You can keep asserting what you like, but I don't think what I just said is unreasonable at all.

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

#134

Post by Semaphor »

whiddershins wrote: post #112
Tobani wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did any musicians ever make a living off radio?

Yes. Entire generations of songwriters made their living from writing songs which were played on the radio.

[citation needed]

I'm pretty sure they made the money from selling the music people heard on the radio.

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

#135

Post by dllthomas »

ThomPete wrote: post #124
dllthomas wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having lived of music myself in my younger years I am all too familiar with the discussion. The problem is that once you start digging into it, the reality is that claiming "i wrote this song" is a much more muddled claim than you might think and so is the claims about how much one should earn and that others are stealing when pirating. In reality 99% of the people playing music wouldn't be able to do it if it wasn't…

"So deal with it and find a way to make money or quit. That's really all there is to say IMO."

I listen to music, I don't create it[1]. This is not the choice that I face, and there's plenty else to say in terms of how I want to direct my attention and my dollars.

[1] at least, not for other people [2]

[2] or at least, they don't appreciate it when it is...

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

#136

Post by svantana »

yajoe wrote: post #46
aresant wrote: post #16

"A good flatterer doesn't lie, but tells his victim selective truths (what a nice color your eyes are). Good PR firms use the same strategy: they give reporters stories that are true, but whose truth favors their clients." I have no idea if David Lowery's original post about making only $16.89 for 1 million plays was distributed by a PR firm, but it sure feels like it. PG's thoughts on PR are spot on, and I love refe…

I imagine the minority here is aware that Pandora now owns a radio station, and their goal is to use the radio station to get more favorable terms for licensing. (wsj story: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732490400457853... ) I interpret these stories and their timings as a prelude to undermine Pandora's bargaining position. It's clearly PR to extract 'higher' payments, even though Pandora already pays…

It's also mentioned in the OP.

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

#137

Post by erikpukinskis »

whiddershins wrote: post #13
Afforess wrote: post #5

Its easy to complain about the low pandora royalties, but these artists are essentially trying to kill the golden goose. Pandora currently spends > 50% of revenue on royalties. Any increases would almost certainly lead to the end of the company. $0 is a lot less than $1,300 for 1 million plays.

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…

> 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.

I don't think that's obvious, I think it's an empirical question. With N subscribers, Pandora currently makes $36 * N per year. If they raise the cost to $50, they'll make $50 * (N - x), where X is the number of subscribers they'd loose.

Of course, all the profit is basically split between the licensors. Pandora currently keeps nothing.

You are suggesting that 50 * (N-x) is "obviously" bigger than 36 * N, but I would suspect that Pandora has already tested it, and $36 provides the maximum possible revenue. If they haven't tested that, they are truly incompetent.

The Pink Floyd article mentions their IPO, but doling out IPO money to licensors is a temporary solution, and probably one Wall Street wouldn't take particularly kindly to. So the choice really is "the current licensing terms, or $0".

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

#138

Post by Dewie »

ThomPete wrote: post #78

I have said it before and I will say it again. 20 years ago that and thousands of others songs wouldn't even have been played anywhere and definitely not a million times. If you want to live off of making music or as an author or anything else you have to think like a publisher not an artist. Playing music is a joy, something you can enjoy whether you make money or not from it. Living from making music is an opportun…

> 20 years ago that and thousands of others songs wouldn't even have been played anywhere and definitely not a million times.

Ironically that song was a hit exactly 20 years ago... so no, it managed to do just fine without a streaming service.

But yeah, I would never go back to the old model of radio and music only being on physical media. In fact, we can't at this point.

> Playing music is a joy, something you can enjoy whether you make money or not from it.

Other than an on average greater passion than in other professions, music sometimes has the potential to be "just a job". You might dream of coding the next greatest physics engine, but you are stuck making the same boring apps in a domain you don't care about. Similarly, you might dream of composing and playing rock operas but you are stuck doing crummy session work for R n B artists. It's not that R n B is bad, but not every musician is necessarily a person that has passion for all kinds of music and all kinds of gigs in the music industry.

But yeah, making a living from it is not a right, just like any profession.

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

#139

Post by toomuchtodo »

adrr wrote: post #97
dllthomas wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the article, FM radio pays royalties to the songwriter but not the performers.

Its reverse. Record industry pays to have their songs played on the air there's even term for it, payola.

At my latest gig (new media), my employment agreement actually has a whole section on payola. #TheMoreYouKnow

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

#140

Post by cdcox »

whiddershins wrote: post #13
Afforess wrote: post #5

Its easy to complain about the low pandora royalties, but these artists are essentially trying to kill the golden goose. Pandora currently spends > 50% of revenue on royalties. Any increases would almost certainly lead to the end of the company. $0 is a lot less than $1,300 for 1 million plays.

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…

According to Pandora about 800 musicians received over 50k a year from them and 2000 received 10k a year. So some people are making a living off Pandora. As Pandora currently has 7% the listeners of radio, it's entirely possible upwards of 10k musicians could make a 'living' off Pandora.

http://blog.pandora.com/2012/10/09/pandora-and-artist-paymen...

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