Pandora On The Edge Of Extinction
Long unresolved royalty issues have put the future of Pandora on the line.
"We’re funded by venture capital. They’re not going to chase
a company whose business model has been broken."""We’re approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision" – Pandora founder Tim Westergren
– Washington Post 8/16/08
All artists deserve fair compensation, but why should net radio pay more than over the air?
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Noooooo! This would be terrible. We listen to Pandora everyday, and couldn’t live w/o it:(
If Pandora does fold, this would be a great example of the purposes of copyright law being quashed by the way it’s carried out. Its purpose is to promote art for the general welfare — the more art there is, the better for the pubic. Because Pandora will have to pay so much royalties for their use of the music, they will not be able to operate. The royalties are too high. Seemingly, a manageable compulsory license here is needed.
Time for the Copyright Royalty Board & Congress to step in. Enough is enough!
Gavroche –
This has nothing to do with copyright law and everything to do with a bad business model. And who ends up NOT getting paid? The artists. So as much as you like to listen to Pandora, the artist is the one who ends up getting screwed. Shouldn’t they be more like Radio? You bet, take in ads the way radio does.
From the Washington Post article on Pandora: “Westergren and other webcasters argue that Web radio, which generally plays a far wider range of music than is offered by traditional radio, provides invaluable promotion for many independent musicians.”
I say if the PR machine is so awesome, they should have no problems attracting advertisers.
And Gavroche – how much would you be willing to pay to keep listening to Pandora? That’s the real question.
i’d pay something to keep my pandora on (Tim, I hope you’re reading) as it’s much better than XM who charges alot…
Speaking as one of the independent artists who has benefited from Pandora and other webcasting services, I don’t really care if I get 10 cents, 5 cents, or .01 cent per spin, as long as I share in the wealth, and that web radio is allowed to find a business model that does so — Pandora included, but not singled out. I agree with Pandora and other webcasters that the model proposed at this point is an unworkable one, and it would behoove some of those parties to spend some of that investor money on a class-action lawsuit to fight for a workable business model. It would also behoove the music industry to stop strangling the goose by using old metrics that don’t apply any more, because before long they will be the ones saying that they are going to have to shut down.
The saddest part is that the people who are demanding this egregiously high payment threshold are NOT helping artists, they are lining their own pockets the same way that the industry has always lined its own pockets with no regard for actual payment to the artists, and sadly, no regard for the future of the industry that pays for their expensive lunches.
That said, if it was serious about competing in a commercial world, Pandora could certainly license its genome technology to one of the thousands of new HD over-the-air stations, many of which are hurting for programming and hosts right now, and let the licensing issues filter themselves out that way.
Seems to me that they are whining rather than being creative in terms of finding an amicable solution and-or workaround to keep their algorithm alive and (genuinely) providing exposure to independent artists.
One question: how is it that their ostensible competitor, Slacker, is not crying that they are going to shut down? Slacker arguably plays a LOT more mainstream material, which means that they definitely are paying the royalties (or risking an injunction).
I think Pandora is terrific, but I also believe that they need to come up with a working model instead of whining, keep it alive while they continue the negotiation and continue to fight another day.