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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

#161

Post by jcampbell1 »

arantius wrote: post #149
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-... )

I meant $0.02, aka 2 cents.

Sorry about that. It is an easy mistake to make at 2pm in the morning.

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

#162

Post by robryan »

gohrt wrote: post #102
ChuckMcM wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would argue eliminating the streaming services would more likely make the pie smaller. I don't think all the people paying x a month or ads supported are going to suddenly start buying albums.

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

#163

Post by baddox »

whiddershins wrote: post #150
Semaphor wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

But they make money when the music is sold, which is what Semaphor said.

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

#164

Post by _j5l3 »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #161
arantius wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-... )

I meant $0.02, aka 2 cents. Sorry about that. It is an easy mistake to make at 2pm in the morning.

Do you mean...2 am?

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

#165

Post by smsm42 »

whiddershins wrote: post #150
Semaphor wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

Where the $800K for radio/TV performances figure came from?

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

#166

Post by robryan »

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.

Really it is a pretty horrible business to be in. You are totally at the mercy of the publishers, should you be really successful at customer acquisition and monetizing then you will be rewarded with higher royalties.

As it stands I don't see how it would be possible for Pandora to ever do better than small profits.

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

#167

Post by bcoates »

whiddershins wrote: post #130
mikeash wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak. Talking about "if" something that is true weren't doesn't seem very useful to me here. Illegal music sharing is reality and shows no signs of stopping, or being stopped.

I used to believe that, but now I am not as sure. I'm not sure most average people use bit torrent anymore. And the web is an extremely inconvenient way to try to access illegal content.

I just ran a little experiment, because I'm out of practice on that sort of thing and too lazy to use anything but Pandora and Rhapsody anymore.

Google searching for 'pink floyd the wall' and clicking the three most obvious links in order gets you a well seeded torrent file. None of the links on the page obviously lead you to somewhere to pay to stream/download the album legally (although there is an iTunes link for the movie at the bottom).

Pirates are still winning on convenience, let alone cost.

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

#168

Post by robryan »

chockablock wrote: post #142
whiddershins wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spotify does though.

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

#169

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.

http://www.artistshousemusic.org/articles/making+money+in+to...

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

#170

Post by notatoad »

wmf wrote: post #69
blhack wrote: post #52

"Pandora advertised my product to 1 Million people and only paid me $1300 for it!"

I can't speak to Pandora specifically, but Spotify is often pitched as an alternative to buying music and it also pays comically low royalties.

Comically low compared to what? Sure, compared to a CD sale they are low, but the royalties on a CD sale cover all future listens, by all future owners of that disc. Royalties on radio playback pay for one listen by tens of thousands of people. Royalties from a stream pay for one listen by one person, of course they are low.
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