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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

#41

Post by baddox »

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.

Why is that obvious? If violating copyrights was impossible, I would probably just be exposed to a lot less music, and would thusly end up spending less on music (I pay for iTunes Match, usually spend $50-100 a year on albums, and $100-200 a year on concerts).

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

#42

Post by masswerk »

So http://masswerk.at/404 just got 1,017,260 hits this month generating no revenues at all ... (as of June 26, partly thanks to a post on HN earlier this month)

Meaning: all this "1 million of anything must be worth tons" isn't really what everything should be all about.

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

#43

Post by veritas20 »

"Industry is shady, it needs to be taken over Label owners hate me, I'm raising the status quo up" - Jay-Z, Izzo

There are way too many hands in the cookie jar and it's way too easy for artists to connect directly with fans and sell to them directly. The current model serves the labels and associated organizations.

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

#44

Post by com2kid »

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…

Half the artists I discover are due to Pandora.

I'm guessing I've bought dozens of CDs and gone to multiple concerts thanks to Pandora.

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

#45

Post by x0x0 »

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…

On what basis do you believe as content distribution technology improves, the percentage given to content creators will increase? This is in direct contrast to historical examples such as monopolies and amazon clearly wants to become a near-monopoly; further, even if the percentage increases, if the absolute amounts fall the content creators still end up worse off. See eg recent articles on HN about the economics of movies being damaged by the move from dvd purchase to $4 or $5 digital rentals.

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

#46

Post by yajoe »

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 among the highest per-listener rates in the US across all mediums. The blog author and parent are spot-on.

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

#47

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#48

Post by Glyptodon »

dillona wrote: post #19
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…

> Not that have knowledge of royalty proportionality, but it also seems unfair to have royalty costs dwarf any other business costs. Why? Their business model is to take other people's work and distribute it to subscribers. It seems to me that acquisition of the actual product should be the majority of their cost.

Excessiveness in the injection of normative notions to a market seems like a bad idea.

In any case, the content is only an aspect of the value, and without the value add many services would be rather useless. If the cost of content dwarfs the use's value add, something with potential becomes something untenable.

I mean without streaming, multiple platform support, browsing/searching, etc., what would Netflix be? The delivery method and interface themselves have value, and it's not insignificant at all.

Remember the purpose of copyright isn't to give creators rights. It's to drag as much out of them for as little cost as possible for the sake of the enrichment of society as a whole.

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

#49

Post by aston »

If I told you there was an e-commerce company without a profitable year in over a decade of existence despite federally-mandated price ceilings placed on their suppliers, you'd be incredulous. If I then added that the same company was lobbying in Washington to get the price ceiling lowered, the pitchforks would be out.

But then mention it's a company selling music, and people shrug, "Oh, well music should be free anyway... The artists should be happy they get anything."

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

#50

Post by chiph »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #39
tveita wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From the most recent 10Q. Revenue was $125M ($105 Ads / $20 Subscriber). Expenses: $82M Content, $10M hosting, $7M Prod Dev., $40M Marketing/Sales, $14M All Other. Net Result: $28M loss.

I wonder how much of that marketing costs are from their own interstitial ads between songs? I would think the cost to them is $0, but I wouldn't be surprised if they valued it at market rates. Perhaps to keep the IRS happy.
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