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.
Are they not still making money off the radio?
Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays
191–200 of 212 posts
Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays
#192"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…
"And they were worth it. PR is the news equivalent of search engine optimization; instead of buying ads, which readers ignore, you get yourself inserted directly into the stories."
Great insight - considering now a days PR is also becoming SEO.
By that I mean that a good PR firm provides a service of getting high-end backlinks from highly authoritative sites - media, etc.
Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays
#193"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…
Yea, the Pink Floyd article suspiciously came out at the same time yesterday in USA Today. And with legislation coming up in congress you know the lobbying pressure is ramping up.
Saw a banner ad for the Pink Floyd catalog being on Spotify tonight. Forgot to screenshot it - but maybe that relates to trashing Pandora?
Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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.
This is a non-sequitur. "Musicians are paid royalties for the rest of their life plus 70 years, therefore they should not complain about how large the royalties are." Obviously if our top musicians earned $10 over a 120 year period they would rightly complain about wages. Also obvious is that a $2 million per year royalty due for a song whose composers died nearly 100 years ago is excessive and wrong.
What is not clear is how to pay musicians. Since you seem to care about this problem, suggest something.
Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays
#195I wonder what the performers/songrwriters think of the fact that I purchased (used) Aerosmith's Hits CD about five years ago for $3.00. I've probably listened (in various formats) to that CD about a hundred+ times in the last five years. There are 10 tracks, so, 1,000 plays for which everyone (Songwriters, Publishers, Performers, Distributes) - all received $0.00. Multiply that by 1,000 Aerosmith fan's who bough a us…
As a performer/songwriter, I don't have a problem with that used cd bit conceptually. All those cds were originally sold full price, generating full revenue.
The original purchaser bought it for full price, and assuming I'm a major artist like Aerosmith, that's big money in the aggregate. A cd isn't rent, it means you get to enjoy that stuff for as long as you own it. If the original purchaser wanted to transfer that ability to someone else even for free, I don't have a problem with it. I don't see cds as somehow being linked to the original person's lifespan, or a time-value of how long he's likely to listen to it. It's the existence of the cd, period. The fact that he got three bucks for it, more power to him.
Now, if he instead ripped the cd to continue his enjoyment and then sold or gave it away, to me that's the same as keeping the cd and letting you rip it (either for free, or for three bucks). That's not okay. He clearly liked it enough to "keep" it, so he should have kept it. In which case (if everyone else acted the same way), you would have bought a new copy, which means more money for the artist.
At any rate, you, by purchasing a used cd, did nothing "wrong" from any perspective in my book, because it can't be on you to ensure that the seller will no longer listen to or enjoy the music. But people that sell their used cds, technically they're stealing if they keep their rips after they sell it. Or at least "stealing", in the sense that it's the same as letting someone else rip/burn their copy.
Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays
#196The graph is funny. Pandora agrees it is roughly accurate.
So, a payout (revenue; before expenses) of $1372 for 1,159,000 plays.
Well, let's look at it in terms of an album where all songs are played equally. In reality, some songs will be played more than others. Assume an album of 10 songs.
Okay, that's $1372 for 115,900 complete album plays.
Well, you can sell an album for $10. More, actually, but let's say $10 since that's the digital rate. And you hope for repeat listens out of an album... ten listens? 100 would be pretty great, actually, maybe that's a true fan.
Well, 115,900 complete album plays for $1372... at ten bucks apiece, that's akin to each purchase being played 1,000 times.
In other words - ignoring other benefits of Pandora - you don't want to use Pandora to "sell" your music unless you have reason to believe that album purchasers would listen to your album 1,000 times or more. Only at that time would Pandora be worth it.
That of course doesn't take Pandora's discovery benefit. I don't know if that would be enough to knock the numbers down to 100 or 10 album listens, but I suspect people often overestimate Pandora's discovery benefit. Just because a listener might discover a lot of new music doesn't mean that an artist gets a lot of new fans from Pandora.
Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays
#197What 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.
When unions are discussed here on HN, will you have the same opinion?
Many unions force companies to pay workers inflated wages which are well above the current rate.
Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays
#198The graph is funny. Pandora agrees it is roughly accurate. So, a payout (revenue; before expenses) of $1372 for 1,159,000 plays. Well, let's look at it in terms of an album where all songs are played equally. In reality, some songs will be played more than others. Assume an album of 10 songs. Okay, that's $1372 for 115,900 complete album plays. Well, you can sell an album for $10. More, actually, but let's say $10 si…
I should offer my own counterpoint here. That analysis ignores the question of whether Pandora plays "rob" from anything else. But since Pandora songs aren't available upon request, it doesn't rob album sales. It's basically gravy.
Now, someone who makes a lot of money off of radio plays, and sees radio plays shrink as Pandora plays increase, they might still feel they have a beef due to the lower songwriter royalty rates.
Spotify, on the other hand, is different. Spotify does rob album sales.
Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays
#199I 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…
Actually, I think that if you want to live off of making music you should think like an artist and plan on making most of your money by actually playing music instead of hoping that you can make a living off of music you played decades ago. Intellectual property and royalties were only invented less than 200 years ago and there's no guarantee that people will be able to depend on that as a source of income in the future.
Re: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays
#200Earlier 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.
Not only is your analogy flawed for the good reasons described, but you also don't understand Pandora.
If you stay on a single station very long, you will hear it repeat. Their catalog simply isn't that large. I can name the THREE whole Calvin Harris songs I've heard in ALL of my EDM artist playlists on Pandora.
On the other hand, I've bought a ton of albums from new artists on Amazon that I'd found through those stations.
Of course, now Spotify is just superior in basically every way and I'll happily pay for it (Or Google Music, still debating)