I hate to wish ill will on anyone, but in my opinion Pandora should be paying most of their revenue in royalties. They complain a lot but what is it they offer? They offer someone else’s product in a format detrimental to most other forms of media. They are like the original napster; fattening their wallets through the talent of others.
Companies like Pandora threaten CD sales, satellite radio and legitimate download mediums such as apple. They basically offer pirated music and complain that they have somehow been treated unfairly because the product they serve up, that does not belong to them in the first place is not making them enough money.
Quite frankly, terrestrial radio should be paying as well, and that will come. None of these people started a band in their garages, played gigs for very little money, went to any lengths to play before an audience and starved for years trying to make it. There is a lot of sacrifice made by musicians on the long road to the top. Most don’t make it.
When they finally do, and their music is made available for free, that cuts into their sales. The recording industry is not going to allow themselves to be hijacked nor should they. Napster tried to pirate music years ago and was forced to reinvent themselves. So my message to Pandora is this: Close up shop and stop talking about it, or reinvent yourselves in such a way as to generate enough revenue to continue.
Of course, I’m also biased, as Sirius XM pay huge royalty fees. What’s good for one is good for all. We are all experts in competition. There is a reason apple downloads cost 1.00. There is a reason other mediums offer subscriber based services. Why should you get a free ride?
For more on this, see todays Washington Post Article.
Slacker is next.