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Comment by whiddershins | Hacker News Reader

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 statutory rates is to create an economic environment where businesses can operate without constant negotiation, and creators can earn a living.

Virtually no one is earning a living from Pandora or Spotify, so, it isn't working. Meanwhile the public has access to a functionally infinite amount and variety of music for nothing, or next to nothing.

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> 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).

Arguing that high royalties make it hard for Pandora to do business is just bullying and threatening.

Oh? If Pandora already spends half its revenues on the music, how is observing that doubling (for example) royalties would cause music costs to eclipse revenues, bullying and threatening? It sounds like Pandora is the one that should feel threatened.

Oh, but isn't that just a failure of their business model? If I can only survive by offering cakes for $5 and buying them for $1 the "threat" would be wholly self inflicted (At least, that is the song which is sung on HN to artists, the "too bad your business model sucks")

Yeah, it would be wonderful if all businesses operated with enough profits they could absorb doubled costs, but that isn't generally how it goes.

Wait, no, it wouldn't be wonderful, because then you'd be angry that every company was making 50% net profit off you left and right.

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.

Hit up grooveshark.com and go to town. It has never been easier.

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.

youtube

Are you being serious? Google "Youtube to Mp3" and have fun. The only real dent in piracy I have seen is that I can't find clips from my favorite episodes of The Simpsons and other Fox properties.... which is annoying because I tried to share a funny scene from Bob's Burgers and the clip was simply unavailable... viral advertising anyone? Sure some clips are available on Hulu... the ones they have pre-screened, but not the one I wanted to show. The networks are short-sighted in my opinion.

> I'm not sure most average people use bit torrent anymore.

Yeah, many people don't - because of Pandora and Spotify. Take those away and people will go back to piracy.

According to Pandora about 800 musicians received over 50k a year from them and 2000 received 10k a year. So some people are making a living off Pandora. As Pandora currently has 7% the listeners of radio, it's entirely possible upwards of 10k musicians could make a 'living' off Pandora.

http://blog.pandora.com/2012/10/09/pandora-and-artist-paymen...

> 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.

I don't think that's obvious, I think it's an empirical question. With N subscribers, Pandora currently makes $36 * N per year. If they raise the cost to $50, they'll make $50 * (N - x), where X is the number of subscribers they'd loose.

Of course, all the profit is basically split between the licensors. Pandora currently keeps nothing.

You are suggesting that 50 * (N-x) is "obviously" bigger than 36 * N, but I would suspect that Pandora has already tested it, and $36 provides the maximum possible revenue. If they haven't tested that, they are truly incompetent.

The Pink Floyd article mentions their IPO, but doling out IPO money to licensors is a temporary solution, and probably one Wall Street wouldn't take particularly kindly to. So the choice really is "the current licensing terms, or $0".

Did any musicians ever make a living off radio?

Often the money went the other direction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola

Exactly. People would pay radio stations to break records. Then people would buy those records.

You'd have to be getting an insane amount of airplay indefinitely to make any sort of living.

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.

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, ticket sales, endorsements, or hosting a reality TV show.

http://blog.startmysong.com/2010/01/02/songwriting-how-much-...

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

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

I downvoted you, because your reply do not include a source that supports the claim that an entire generations of songwriters made their living from radio royalties.

The linked blog do nothing of the sort. It simply state that song writers get in average an $800,000 for radio and TV for a "hit song".

It doesn't say how much is TV vs radio. It doesn't say what a hit song mean, or how many CD's such song will in average sell. It doesn't say what the average number of songs of a singular author is in such CD. It doesn't say what the average income from digital downloads are from producing such hit song, or how it effect sales from the authors other works.

And worst of... Its a blog without any source for its data, and has a disclaimer at the bottom that says: ... the information is the opinion of the author only.

It is really hard for me to realize how ignorant of the music industry tech people are. Maybe that's because you guys seem delighted to pontificate all day long, without mentioning you have no clue whatsoever how any of it works.

I didn't realize I need a citation to explain what is obvious to any music industry professional: performance royalties from radio play are a major source of revenue for songwriters of hit songs.

If the passle of you want to wave your opinions around for decades while literally enabling and rationalizing the destruction of an industry through targeted technology (napster, for example, originally ONLY supported mp3s) maybe you should do your own research and educate yourself, and not expect me to footnote every assertion.

Otherwise, just admit you want everyone else's IP for free and stop making up justifications.

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

Are they not still making money off the radio?

They make more from Pandora than they ever did from radio... and their music accesses a larger audience.

This is patently untrue.

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?

Pandora as it operates today is a money-losing enterprise. So assuming those competitors pay the same licensing rates, and barring one of them inventing some genius new revenue stream, the answer to "why won't users just switch to those other services" is that those other services will just go out of business.

Virtually no one is earning a living from Pandora or Spotify, so, it isn't working.

Citation?

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