Hacker News Reader

Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

This ruined any credibility that blog post had for me:

"If major market FM stations paid the same rates as Pandora, based on audience, some would be paying thousands of dollars for every song they played. How much do they pay performers right now? Zero."

He's using industry jargon to pretend like FM radio doesn't pay out to artists. The reality is, he's being very deceitful.

I own a group of radio stations. We've paid out more to music rights than we've generated in profit over the last two decades. If the artists want a different form of royalty representation, such as direct royalties from radio stations (instead of getting a small downstream cut from the licensing companies), they need to abandon the labels and the status quo. Radio stations didn't arrange this formula, and I'd personally vote in favor of abolishing it tomorrow if I could. I'd rather the artists get 100% of the fees we pay for music rights.

View on HN

I'm trying to understand where you are getting deceit from. He references the excellent breakdown on royalties we talked about yesterday, and in that breakdown there were three that Pandora pays, songwriter, publisher, and performer, and only two that radios pay songwriter and publisher. Since the royalty that Pandora pays to the performer is per listener (it is per spin, and each spin represents exactly 1 listener [1]) and a typical radio station in a large market can have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of listeners. If the Radio played the performer royalty it would be very expensive for them. That seemed pretty clear from his discussion.

[1] Yes I've been in restaurants where the background music came from Pandora (probably not part of the ToS)

> Yes I've been in restaurants where the background music came from Pandora (probably not part of the ToS)

They were more than likely licensed for it, it's only $24.95/month for business use (http://www.dmx.com/pandora/).

Oh, that is awesome. I was not aware of that. Now I don't have to feel guilty about enjoying it!

Did you read yesterday's post linked in the article [1]?

  WHO PAYS FOR:            Pandora   AM/FM
  Songwriting/Publishing     YES      YES
  Performance                YES      NO

And those performance royalties Pandora pays are 13 times songwriting/publishing! Not to mention your royalties are capped at 1.5% of revenue. You are paying less than 1/10 what Pandora pays for each listener hearing an artist's song. Please enlighten us if this is incorrect or how this is fair?

[1] http://theunderstatement.com/post/53867665082/pandora-pays-f...

I don't recall arguing that radio pays less royalties than Pandora. I'd like you to show me where I said that (you can't). You've almost completely ignored what I actually said.

Your position claiming that radio pays 10% what Pandora does for each listener hearing a song is bogus, just on the fact that you can't actually show me how many people are hearing a song on my radio stations at any given time. Thus you are presenting false data.

I specifically said that the claim that radio doesn't pay out to artists is deceitful. It is.

If your issue is that publishers are ripping off artists when it comes to the cut from radio plays, then why aren't you arguing in favor of fixing that? Radio stations don't get to choose how they license popular music; they don't get to pick whether they pay publishers via BMI / ASCAP or artists directly.

Also, in fact, in the past I have indeed argued that Pandora is getting screwed compared to radio. It's obvious they are.

He said "performers". If your radio station pays performers, you need to fire your accountant.

Yeah he said performers, and that's exactly the part he's attempting to be deceitful about (as I said, he's using industry jargon to pretend that FM stations don't pay out to artists). He intentionally blends that right into the conversation about how much radio stations pay for playing songs, and what a play is worth. Blatant case of Westergren being scummy in attempting to pave over Pandora's own sins.

No he isn't being deceitful at all! He explicitly says that he is talking about the performance fee and not the song writer fee. He is very clear to distinguish them in his post.

Yes he blends them into the conversation about how much radio stations pay, and what a play is worth, because it is relevant to the discussion! Performers deserve to get paid for performing their songs as well as the writers.

It is deceitful.

I can prove him wrong in about 5 seconds.

Do any musicians own the rights to their own songs? Do any musicians write their own music? Do any musicians get royalties for radio plays? And there you go, I just proved him wrong.

He presented a case claiming X was 100% true, and he lied. Plain and simple.

>> We've paid out more to music rights than we've generated in profit over the last two decades.

Did you mean profits of revenues? I don't understand why radio should have profits higher than one of it's largest costs item

I don't recall arguing otherwise. I completely agree.

You're making my point. Radio pays out significantly to music rights owners. In my case, about three fold greater than the profits generated since 1990. It's up to the artists to determine the contracts they sign with publishers, and the extent to which they own the rights to their music. That dictates how much they get paid for radio plays.

Aren't radio station royalties only paid to songwriters and publishers? I could be wrong on that, but that's what I thought I remembered reading in the past. If that's true, then he's right in saying nothing goes to the performers.

The royalties are paid to the rights owners (through organizations like ASCAP and BMI).

Whether you get paid for plays on FM as an artist, depends on if you own any rights to your music, and or what deal you've signed. The best thing you can do as an artist, is try to retain maximum ownership of your music, and make sure you get the best deal possible if you sign with a publisher.

Westergren is completely wrong about nothing going to the performers. First of all, the fact that some performers also own their music rights and are songwriters with royalty cuts, proves him wrong. Second, the cut that goes to the performer is determined by the contract they sign.

Sorry, I am getting confused by all the jargon being used here and in the article.

You say you pay artists but then you imply that you pay associations / labels who then pay artists based on their contract with the association / label.

Doesn't that mean that you do not pay artists in the same manner as Pandora?

(also, if you have the time, I am not exactly sure what the performer, artist etc. separation is regarding payments, could you clarify?)

Artists get paid based on their contract with publishers for radio plays. Some musicians get paid well by publishers for radio play, others get completely screwed. It depends on what deal they sign.

The fact is, and this is a fact: artists get royalty cuts from publishers based on radio play. The details of it varies from one contract to the next (eg what Madonna makes versus Joe Nobody).

Also, sometimes artists are the songwriters, that's not uncommon at all in fact. Sometimes artists have very lucrative rights ownership over their own music. That all depends on the choices they make along the way.

Radio doesn't pay artists directly (would have been wildly impractical until recently), but that's also not by choice. Radio stations don't get to choose how they license the music, that's dictated by the rights holders of the music (the publishers and companies like Sony ATV hold most of the power).

Thank you for the clarification. So going back to one of your earlier comments

>> "If major market FM stations paid the same rates as Pandora, based on audience, some would be paying thousands of dollars for every song they played. How much do they pay performers right now? Zero."

> He's using industry jargon to pretend like FM radio doesn't pay out to artists. The reality is, he's being very deceitful. (Emphasis added by RurouniJones)

But based on what you have said above he is correct. You do not pay out to artists, you pay out to associations (I understand this is not by choice and that you are basically screwed by powerful publishing cartels).

It may be a small semantic difference but you said he lost credibility and was being deceitful by saying it when he (at least to me the layman) appears to be correct.

Songwriting royalities and performance royalities are two separate pieces of the pie. Just because some artists also get songwriting royalties from radio stations does not change the fact that radio stations don't pay performance royalties.

The only person who lied about this is David Lowery in the headline: "My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What I Make From a Single T-Shirt Sale!" because that's NOT all he gets, he also get performance royalties (which he clarifies in the blogpost, but the headline is still wrong until he qualify that he's talking about songwriting royalties).

No they're really not two different pieces of the pie.

Ultimately the rights owner determines everything, and that makes it a very simple equation.

If a performer wants paid, they can determine that by the contract they willingly sign with a publisher. It all comes back to who owns the music and who signs what royalty deals.

What are you talking about? A publisher owns the copyright to the composition. The performer (or usually her record label) owns the copyright to the recorded sound.

US radio stations pays for one of these, pandora pays for both. http://milomlaw.com/news/terrestrial-radio-performance-royal...

I did not find it confusing. Then again, I did understand that there are different royalties being compared here and that those royalties are paid out to different people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com