Blog Post, Pandora KO-ed by new royalties?












Originally published at 7 pm on Monday, updated at 11.10 pm

33 Responses to “, Pandora KO-ed by new royalties?”

  1. This issue and Net Neutrality seem to run hand in hand. As big corporate media try to play catch up with these new technologies and want to tilt the playing field to favor their business models.

  2. Jordan

    The problem is – the more free alternatives that emerge, the further cannibalized music revenues become – whether thats through sales or an advertising model. If the rates for automatic streaming are too low, the problem occurs where you have too many internet radio stations popping up because its cheap and easy to do so. Terrestrial radio has barriers to entry that far exceed the barriers to internet radio. I don’t think its as cut and dry as it may seem.

  3. Interesitng thread…

    Couple of things to think about though:
    1. How does the new royalty for webcasters compare to other “music-casters”? Do terrestrial ad based free radio pay similar royalty or not?

    1. why do people think that these “webcasters” will shut down. They will probably shut down commercial free, money free, unlimited, service.. but they will find ad based or some other model to support the audience. Arent these site building some sort of stickyness (built albums, preferences, etc.)?


  4. rmowery

    This is another attempt by the RIAA to strong arm everyone. If Pandora and get caught up, what they should do instead of closing down is to just broadcast Creative Commons or Garage band type music. Just ditch the record labels. A good example I have seen with the CC is here:

    BTW: Harry L. you must be working for the RIAA or something not to realize that these lazy middlemen do nothing but stiffle innovation. The artists don’t get the $$ – the lazy record Exces make all the $$ and the artists are paid pennies. The RIAA are just a bunch of record Exc Henchman trying to break arms and legs to stay in business.

  5. I do find it somewhat strange that any webcasting business would not be aware of the potenial cost implications involved in the nature of running such a service. While these rate increases are fairly new the fact that royalty rate increases might be in the offing should have been part of these companies’ business plans all along. When have you ever seen a royalty rate DECREASE?

  6. This latest news is bad news of course, for everyone. I recently read that MTV doesn’t even pay royalties on the videos they play. If the royalty rates were reasonable that would be one thing…if they can find a formula that doesn’t overwhelm webcasters that’s fine, but the royalties they want are extreme, unfair, and help destroy what’s left of the music “business”. One guy just posted on Digg that he worked at a terrestrial radio station that had to pay $400/song played, simply outrageous! No wonder there’s so damn many commercials…and no wonder I no longer listen to radio anymore!!! Anyways, the RIAA should focus on eliminating middlemen and lowering CD prices…and they better enjoy their lawsuits while they can, because lots of file-sharers are making the switch to encrypted file-sharing solutions like GigaTribe, which keep people out of the radar ( ).

  7. Hank Williams

    Part of the problem is that an advertising based business model for audio does not exist – or lets just say it is so small that its not workable. So the question is whether it is fair to ask the record industry to take 20% of nothing. The problem is that audio advertising has almost exclusively been a local business. There is almost no national audio advertising – internet or otherwise.

    To NatC

    Actually on the internet for most of this stuff the royalties for american created content are the same world wide although some of the issues are being worked out since recording copyrights (not song copyrights) are a new revenue stream for american record companies. SoundExchange – the relevant royalty collector on behalf of the performance copyright holders (as opposed to ascap, bmi and sesac for song copyrights) is only a few years old and still figuring some of this out. But just to be clear, a french only rights grant doesnt give you the right to broadcast content into america or do business in america – like selling ads. Given the somewhat borderless nature of the internet this is a difficult concept, but is legally well established.

    to david

    The grandfathering of terrestrial broadcasting does suck. If they had to pay this they too would be significantly damaged. But I dont think any gradfathering would apply to if viacom acquired since it is a digital service, but more importantly since it is an interactive service, so in truth these rates dont apply. They are required to negotiate rates with individual labels, which in fact they have recently done with EMI and Warner.

    To Ted

    These rates are not being set by the RIAA, but by the US Copyright Office. The government listens to all the arguments (at least in theory) and sets a rate. So this has nothing to do with monopolies or cartels or anything like that.

  8. Hmmm… this is not mentionned anywhere in the post, but I would assume that you are speaking about US regulations here.
    I know for sure that French companies are subject to a different calculation of fees. And I’m wondering: since is based in London, wouldn’t they rather be subject to a UK fee system? Aren’t companies subject to the regulations of their country of origin?

  9. What I never understood was, how does the actions made by the RIAA differ from that of a cartel? Isn’t this the equivalent of a group of producers price-fixing and essentially acting as a collective monopoly?

  10. the worst part is, most or all of the terrestrial guys were either grandfather claused in or cut deals to pay drastically reduced fees. you can bet they lobbied hard for this. creates a real chasm between the have and the have nots. not sure whether mtv is already blanketed and could protect in an acquisition.

    but this is precisely why mog has stayed clear. making money from online radio has always been a no man’s’ land. media planners after years can barely grasp the banner. terrestrial radio guys can’t grasp online. hence, no man’s land.

  11. Robert

    Harry L: You are indeed “missing something”.

    That’s $100/year/user. We’re talking millions of dollars when it is aggregated up. These businesses aren’t making hundreds of dollars per user. They are making (if anything) pennies per user. The new rates make this margin disappear.

  12. Om, thanks for the link. Btw, I was at Live365, not Yahoo365. ;-)

    Harry L, you are missing something. The performance rate is per song per listener. So, if you stream 15 songs in an hour to 100 listeners that listened for that hour, it equals 1,500 performances. Doesn’t sound like much but it adds up.

  13. says the change in fees could shut them down.

    See the story on the main page. Too bad. I really like their format, which ranges from alt-country and classic rock to postmodern.

  14. Am I missing something? If it costs webcasters
    24 cents a day presently to play music, and this proposed increase would raise their costs to about 65 cents per day, it doesn’t seem that significant. That difference works out to
    just over 100$ a year. Will that really affect anyone’s business model?