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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

#141

Post by logn »

tveita wrote: post #29
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.

Relevant opinion: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/06/23/pink-floyd-... > "We've heard Pandora complain it pays too much in royalties to make a profit. (Of course, we also watched Pandora raise $235 million in its IPO and double its listeners in the last two years.) But a business that exists to deliver music can't really complain that its biggest cost is music." Sounds reasonable enough to me. Do they have…

I'd argue that rivaling music, pandora's biggest product is their music recommendation system. It's second to none in my opinion. Google has clearly put together a good system too recently with their generated playlists, and last.fm has had similar recommendations. However, as far as a recommendation system that exposes you to new, different music you would have never selected on your own, Pandora makes good choices with surprising accuracy.

Part of that is their Music Genome Project where human beings listened to every song Pandora hosted and rated every aspect of it. I'm sure now they just have a ton of other useful data from listening habits. Regardless, I think the music could almost be seen as secondary.

If all Pandora wanted to do was have me pay $36 dollars for a weekly, automated newsletter telling me of new songs I might like and then collecting my feedback for future newsletters made for me, I'd likely pay for that. They could even alert me to new concerts in my area. Of course, the music streaming ties that all together in a really compelling way.

So, I think if anything you could say that about 50% to musicians and 50% to programmers and staff and overhead sounds about right. Hopefully they manage to eek out a profit to stick around.

They'll be greatly missed if all that's left one day is iHeartRadio and the same old industry pushing the same old method of selecting hits.

Pandora is undeniably a good way to listen to music, and all anyone wants is to ensure they have a fair way to compete.

No one likes seeing artists go hungry. But we all also recognize that if there's anyone being unfair to artists, it's the mega industry from the prior era.

The new industry involves artists owning their work and paying $50/year at TuneCore or similar companies to get their music distributed to companies such as Pandora. Or, they sign up to traditional album sellers like BandCamp or CDBaby. It's simply the most efficient way to do it now.

Absolutely we appreciate the music industry for almost a century of fantastic art and culture. But they either need to adapt or gracefully accept their new role, which is a purveyor of American classics and the niche hype machine for the few mega acts of pop music who actually get good terms on their contracts with major labels.

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

#142

Post by chockablock »

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.

If Pandora's streams 'are the product' then why does Pandora have a 'Buy' button? It's not a tip jar: Pandora doesn't let you listen to a particular song on demand, or offline.

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

#143

Post by shuzchen »

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.

That's not an analogous situation. When you buy a Honda Fit, you selected it specifically at the dealership (down to choosing the color and possibly extra add-ons like GPS, smart-key, etc), agreed on a sum of money to exchange and then took ownership of it and drove it home. When you listen to a song on Pandora, it's likely that you've never heard of that song (or even the artist) before. Combine this with the feature that lets you purchase the song (or album it came from), and it's not a far stretch to view of plays on Pandora as advertisement to the benefit of the artists.

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

#144

Post by dtf »

thijsc wrote: post #73
hexis wrote: post #71

On some days, I wish companies like Pandora, Spotify, and Rdio would just voluntarily shut down. If the music industry thinks streaming companies are ripping them off, the music industry is welcome to build their own streaming business and show everyone how it's done. Musicians were complaining about royalties and payment long before the internet was invented and they'll be complaining long after we're all gone. Keep…

Spotify is owned partially by the music industry: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/aug/17/major-... I'm sure the labels are very happy to keep making the same margins they used to with these new distribution channels. The music industry is doing fine here, it's just the artists who are getting a small piece of the pie.

Maybe this is the crux of the issue. The labels would like to shut down the competition and control the channel as did before. It would explain the PR blitz.

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

#145

Post by FireBeyond »

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 love that he only quoted his songwriter royalties (shared with the band), not his performance, and artist royalties.

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

#147

Post by mullingitover »

klodolph wrote: post #86
mullingitover wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Content creation will get cheaper as technology improves, sure, but in fields like music and writing, content creators struggle to make a decent wage. As well they should--it's an ultra-competitive field, swarming with competitors, the market is so flooded it makes New Orleans after Katrina look like a kiddie pool. Unless you're the cream of the cream of the crop, you're going to struggle in this industry. And not…

> And not one of the content creators has an inherent 'right' to make a profit from their work. Agreed. > The market decides winners and losers, and inevitably in this market it's going to be mostly losers. But the problem is that royalty rates are decided by law, rather than by negotiation between interested parties. This isn't a market economy, this is a planned economy.

> But the problem is that royalty rates are decided by law, rather than by negotiation between interested parties. This isn't a market economy, this is a planned economy.

Those are the breaks. Copyright itself isn't a market economy, it's a "temporary" monopoly that's granted by the people and it comes with stipulations. The royalty rates perhaps aren't what the content creators would like them to be, but complaining about that when the term lengths for copyright are so outrageously generous just smacks of greed. For most working people, you get paid for your work once, and not for the rest of your life plus an additional 70 years.

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

#148

Post by monkeyspaw »

aston wrote: post #110
Dylan16807 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 concer…

Do you have a reference handy for your statement "radio is super-effective at advertising higher-revenue-generating products..."?

I don't necessarily doubt it is more effective for certain things, like local events (although Pandora could move that direction I suppose). I'm just wondering why radio would be so much more effective. Is it because they have so many more ads per hour of play, and radio "personalities" to shill local stuff?

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

#149

Post by arantius »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #27

This makes sense. Another way to back into the figure: Pandora spent $82M on content according to the most recent 10Q, with 4.18B listener hours. That implies a cost of $0.02 cents per listener hour. A million plays is roughly 62500 listener hours, which implies a content cost of $1250.

Sorry but ..

"$0.02 cents"? Do you mean "$0.02", or "2 cents" or two hundredths of one cent, or something else?

Is this Verizon writing? ( http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-... )

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

#150

Post by whiddershins »

Semaphor wrote: post #134
whiddershins wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

downvote me all you guys want. People in the tech community consistently conflate performing artists (bands and stars you recognize) with composers (songwriters, the people creating the intellectual property, and who are most screwed by the modern economy)

a song isn't an advertisement for ANYTHING for the songwriter. It is the entirety of the songwriter's creation. The songwriter does not make a living from t-shirts, ticket sales, endorsements, or hosting a reality TV show.

http://blog.startmysong.com/2010/01/02/songwriting-how-much-...

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