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Comment by aston | Hacker News Reader

Why's the price matter? Any store that buys merchandise it can't sell at a profit is making a basic business mistake.

Separately, to your point about unfairness, I suspect that both radio and internet streaming prices are lower than what the market would set if the government didn't intervene.

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Remember, copyright exists for the public good. Would radio still exist if it paid significantly more than current internet prices instead of less? Would that be preferable to the current situation?

If, simultaneously, congress removed the compulsory licensing radio had to pay (or, alternately, raised it to match Pandora's on a per-listener basis) and the FCC also removed restrictions around Payola, record labels big and small would probably be happy to subsidize the difference for radio stations because radio (unlike Pandora) is super-effective at advertising higher-revenue-generating products like local concerts and physical CDs.

Do you have a reference handy for your statement "radio is super-effective at advertising higher-revenue-generating products..."?

I don't necessarily doubt it is more effective for certain things, like local events (although Pandora could move that direction I suppose). I'm just wondering why radio would be so much more effective. Is it because they have so many more ads per hour of play, and radio "personalities" to shill local stuff?

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