Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays

theunderstatement.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 212 posts

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

#21

Post by jsnk »

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…

It's easier said than done to think that charging more and putting more commercial will still allow Pandora to retain the customers. If rdio, Spotify, Rhapsody all are offering similar service at lower rate, what's to stop the customers from going to other services?

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

#22

Post by gravitronic »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
gravitronic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really shitty golden goose.

Compared to what, FM radio? Which pays NOTHING? Artists, get over yourself. The market is huge now, and your product value is approaching zero. But keep on flailing in the noose. EDIT: Half credit. Per dllthomas, "Per the article, FM radio pays royalties to the songwriter but not the performers."

FM radio pays royalties.

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

#23

Post by throwaway10001 »

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.

Judging by what I have read, Pandora is not making much (if anything) so there's a limit on how much they can pay. Maybe the is not a feasible business model, or maybe someone else--other than the artist--is getting the lion share of the royalties.

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

#24

Post by Tobani »

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…

Did any musicians ever make a living off radio?

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

#25

Post by smacktoward »

thehme wrote: post #8

Considering that I have bought several CDs because I heard them on Pandora, I am sure everyone is getting money, but it usually is never enough. I don't know what exactly the cost of running a Pandora company means financially, but with all the upgraded, changes, improvements I expect from it, they definitely need money to pay the developers, so that we, the listener can love the music and buy the albums, which I wou…

> I don't know what exactly the cost of running a Pandora company means financially

Well, Pandora is a public company, so they have to disclose all that stuff. Which means we can look it up! Transparency is awesome.

According to their latest annual report (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9M...), in fiscal 2012 Pandora brought in $274 million on $285 million in operational expenses.

Of those expenses, $149 million were for content licensing. Product development accounted for $13 million.

Of the money they made, the vast majority ($240 million) came from advertising.

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

#26

Post by Glyptodon »

whiddershins wrote: post #6
Glyptodon wrote: post #3

> "On the contrary, it seems quite likely that others should be paying more." Not that have knowledge of royalty proportionality, but it also seems unfair to have royalty costs dwarf any other business costs. I have no idea how much it costs Pandora to stream a song, but if it's a fraction of the ~$0.0012/listen they seem to pay in royalties, it seems like the royalty is disproportionate and unfair. On the other hand…

I'm sorry, but what you are writing here is incoherent. If what you were suggesting made any sense, as Pandora lowers their infrastructure costs and overhead, so too would the royalty payment go down, and all the profit would go to Pandora only. The one has nothing to do with the other.

You're the one expressing a non-sequitur. Proportionality of royalty should enable other services to compete with Pandora on the same playing field, so profit would also be proportional to decreased costs or Pandora would risk being wiped out by competition. There'd be no ability for collusive cartels of copyright holders to act as market deciders, or for single players to succeed at profiting disproportionately with respect to their costs.

I guess maybe this would require a corollary of compulsory licensing, but I'm pretty sure that already exists to a large extent.

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

#27

Post by jcampbell1 »

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.

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

#28

Post by strickjb9 »

klodolph wrote: post #18
Glyptodon wrote: post #3

> "On the contrary, it seems quite likely that others should be paying more." Not that have knowledge of royalty proportionality, but it also seems unfair to have royalty costs dwarf any other business costs. I have no idea how much it costs Pandora to stream a song, but if it's a fraction of the ~$0.0012/listen they seem to pay in royalties, it seems like the royalty is disproportionate and unfair. On the other hand…

Amazon pays a 70% royalty for ebooks that were published directly by the author. Is it unfair for this royalty to be so large? (I realize that this is more complicated than "70%", see https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26O... ) I think it's a sign of efficiency that a large portion of the money goes to content creators. Content creation will get cheaper as technology improves, sure, but in field…

Apples and oranges. Amazon - a customer pays them money - 30% net margin Pandora - ad-based revenue

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

#29

Post by tveita »

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 any other major expenditures besides hosting?

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

#30

Post by mullingitover »

klodolph wrote: post #18
Glyptodon wrote: post #3

> "On the contrary, it seems quite likely that others should be paying more." Not that have knowledge of royalty proportionality, but it also seems unfair to have royalty costs dwarf any other business costs. I have no idea how much it costs Pandora to stream a song, but if it's a fraction of the ~$0.0012/listen they seem to pay in royalties, it seems like the royalty is disproportionate and unfair. On the other hand…

Amazon pays a 70% royalty for ebooks that were published directly by the author. Is it unfair for this royalty to be so large? (I realize that this is more complicated than "70%", see https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26O... ) I think it's a sign of efficiency that a large portion of the money goes to content creators. Content creation will get cheaper as technology improves, sure, but in field…

> 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 one of the content creators has an inherent 'right' to make a profit from their work. The market decides winners and losers, and inevitably in this market it's going to be mostly losers. Whether or not it's 'fair' is irrelevant, life isn't fair.

Post reply on HN