Pandora Suit May Upend Century-Old Royalty Plan | Hacker News Reader

Pandora Suit May Upend Century-Old Royalty Plan

nytimes.com

30 pointsdigital5519 comments

What I don't understand is why the music companies license their entire catalogs to the likes of Spotify and Google All Access, which is a direct replacement for buying music, but want to drive true Internet Radio like Pandora and indie stations out of business. It makes no sense.

My guess: it's a control issue. Direct license deals can be done behind closed doors, and that privacy is worth a lot in controlling other negotiations.

When any guy off the street can pay $0.005 or whatever to stream your content, your bargaining position is already compromised, because the guy has an alternative to negotiating with you at all.

With a direct deal, you could employ all kinds of strategies. Charge different rates for different songs. Give discounts to some players. Keep the contract short-lived to keep them coming back. I think a lot of that goes out of the window with compulsory licensing.

Full disclosure: I work for Pandora, but am speaking more from my days as a "promoter".

It probably has something to do with the fact that traditional radio is viewed as more of a promotional tool to drive record sales than a revenue stream.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola

Enter Pandora which even though it has radio in the name is different in that the user has a greater degree of control. So Where as artist were accepting that they didn't make much off traditional radio and viewed getting play time as good publicity they probably don't view Pandora and services like that in the same light. In fact they might even view them as cutting into Record and digital download sales.

I went to a talk at Pandora couple weeks ago and Tim Westergren said that 90% of Americans still use (traditional) radio every week. I doubt music companies are trying to get the indie stations to go out of business -- they go out of business because they don't play the hits (thus it's harder to gain a huge user base + monetize).

90% has to be a subset of something, there is no way 297 million Americans use the radio. I bet it is something like 90% of automobile drivers use the radio, I never heard the radio outside of cars these days. Even most businesses use some sort of streaming for their music these days.

It's a subset of 100% ;)

http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/03/nielsen-more-than-90-perce...

Oh I totally misread your comment. I thought it was 90% each day, not each week. It still seems high to me, I bet there are more than 10% that are too young/old/sick to even use a radio.

Seems very high to me too but I don't own a car and I have a non-radio alarm.

I wonder if they count things like office visits or internet streamed radio. I'd say we are outliers but many don't own cars.

Quoted from that report: "AM/FM RADIO METHODOLOGY: Audience estimates for 48 large markets are based on a panel of people who carry a portable device called PPM that passively detects exposure to content that contains inaudible codes embedded within the program content. Audience estimates from the balance of markets and counties in the US are based on surveys of people who record their listening in a written diary for a week.

The estimates in this report are based on RADAR and the National Regional Database. RADAR reports national network radio ratings covering the US using both PPM and Diary measurement and it is based on a rolling one-year average of nearly 400,000 respondents aged 12+ per year. The National Regional Database reports national and regional radio ratings for individual radio stations using both PPM and Diary measurement. It is published twice a year and the annual sample is more than 600,000 respondents aged 12+.

NOTES: Listening to HD radio broadcasts, Internet streams of AM/FM radio stations and Satellite Radio is included the Persons Using Radio estimates in this report where the tuning meets our reporting and crediting requirements. Monthly Time Spent Listening is derived by multiplying the weekly time spent listening estimate by 4.33 (the average number of weeks in a calendar month)."

So 90% of people in a panel with a PPM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_People_Meter)

This doesn't meet any reasonable definition of "using" traditional radio. It doesn't even prove people are "listening to" or "hearing" traditional radio.

Under this system, one person could "infect" hundreds of other people who aren't paying any attention to the noise. I could even be watching a movie with noise-isolating headphones on and it would still register if I were in range of somebody else's radio.

CD101 (CD1025) in Columbus is as indie as they come. Independently owned and operated, playing indie and alt rock. They are doing awesome and are a true jewel for the city. If indie radio can make it in Ohio why are so many other stations having so much trouble?

I'm not saying correlation == causation, however, there are something like 55k college students who are probably more of the target demographic for that particular genre making up a big portion of the listening audience.

Radio in LA is an absolute embarrassment. My theory is that the Clear Channels fight over and dominate (and homogenize) the larger markets and it's only in smaller markets where independent radio can survive.

Agreed. The music companies seem really odd about what they'll license, and to who. Is it a control issue? That is, when they license to All Access or Spotify, the music companies perceive that they have more control than with Pandora.

Music companies don't see Spotify as competing with purchases, they see it as competing with "free" (aka, piracy)

correct. they make no sense. they're senseless. insane. useless. they haven't heard the shot. 20 years of internet and they're still fucking around. they need to die. they need to die a very, very painful death. but that's upon us.

Unlike the common lexicon we are used to, there's no one single unified "music industry". It is composed of many individuals, companies, and government bodies and they all have goals and interests of own which do not coincide with each other all the time. Deals with internet music companies are made on individual basis at different times in different financial circumstances etc.

> record companies ... only ... to publishers

Aren't those two the same thing?

Often, but not always.

A record company can be just the label the music is marketed under. Or it can be both the label and the publisher of the music (with the publisher typically holding the copyrights).

For example, in 1995 Jay-Z created Roc-A-Fella Records as his label, and then Priority handled distribution for him (and later Def Jam).

Sometimes large stars will own a record company that holds their music rights, while having someone like Warner for distribution purposes.

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