Washington Post:
Pandora is one of the nation's most popular Web radio services, with about 1 million listeners daily. Its Music Genome Project allows customers to create stations tailored to their own tastes. It is one of the 10 most popular applications for Apple's iPhone and attracts 40,000 new customers a day.
Yet the burgeoning company may be on the verge of collapse, according to its founder, and so may be others like it.
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The article contains a falsehood when it says that radio stations pay no royalties. They pay blanket royalties to ASCAP which is then distributed to the artists. Here is a FAQ on how the program works.
http://www.ascap.com/licensing/radio/radiofaq.html
Now why don't interenet radio station participate in the ASCAP program? I'm not sure exactly, but to say that broadcast radio pays nothing for playing songs is false.
Some of the Internet stations do pay ASCAP 2.5% on top of the fees they pay to Sound Exchange.
No-one is saying that Internet Radio should not pay for usage of music. The problem is that IR pays disproportionate fees.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) does not want IR and is trying to destroy it. They think of it as just another file sharing service, like NAPSTER.
There are many different kinds of IR. If a Radio Broadcaster (includes NPR), who pays ASCAP fees, streams their shows they than have to pay Sound Exchange as well. Real Networks, Yahoo and AOL pay both ASCAP and SoundExchange. Small IR stations and hobbyists pay Sound Exchange.
Why do the fees have to be higher than the IR stations profits? Because RIAA does not want IR.
Which makes no sense. Mosy of my CD purchases are driven by what I hear on IR, not Clear Chennel.
It is definitely a factor of greed and it will affect the artists themselves.
Broadcast radio does not know exactly how many are listening. It simply throws its signal out an antenna towards a potential audience. Any demographics or ratings are a guess. Satellite is like that also, though there are subscribers, I don't know how they would know exactly how many are listening at any given time to any of their channels, maybe nobody.
Internet on the other hand can have precise numbers associated with the stream. Some have a lot some not so many. The stations are in every time zone all the time and its always morning somewhere. So the money folks see that it can be done, the collection of royalties that is, and they go about doing it, literally promising the world to their clients.
They are greedily off base in this issue, limiting the future of something that hasn't gotten off the ground yet.
Arbitron ratings give fairly accurate estimates of listenership, as they do with satellite as well. I would not be surprised if the recievers have a limited talk-back ability.
The FCC is an outdated dinosaur, run by nepotistic ignorami from the 1930's. "The Right of FREE SPEECH shall not be abridged"- unless of course you want to start a radio station. Only SUPER RICH people or corporations are allowed a broadcasting license. They allow Joe Schmoe from Kokomo to broadcast at one TENTH of one watt. That might make it to your backyard on a clear night. If the idiots at FCC would only allow people to start up their own stations at 5 to 10 watts, this country would soon be awash in all kinds of creative programming by it's own everyday citizens. Why can't I buy a ten watt transmitter on eBay and get a business license and start playing jazz for the community? Don't I have the RIGHT to start a business in America? I wasn't born FILTHY RICH enough to be an independent broadcaster? As long as people don't interfere with another stations' signal, what's the beef? Why does CLEAR CHANNEL get to rule the world?
22 years ago I went to broadcasting school and I qualified for a First Class Broadcast Licence. I'm not "filthy rich". I just wanted to be on the radio and for 11 years I was, in 5 different markets.
There are only so many frequencies available, so you can't just let anyone broacast from their basement. It would interfere with other stations.
You don't have the "right" to be on the radio, but as an American citizen, you have the ability to try. If you work hard and pay your dues in very small markets, you can work your way up the chain to larger markets and larger stations for larger money. Even Clear Channel started off as a small company and it grew with their success.
If you want you can start an internet station and compete with the likes of Pandora. It's your choice.
Stop whinning about your free speech rights. Even HuffPo is letting you speak.......in font.
Hi Mark- how appropro for you! Lemme get on my knees and thank the great white fathers for allowing you to go on the air in 5 markets. Now exactly which station did you OWN? Channel interference is only a problem in larger cities. There's plenty of bandwith for the public to play with on both FM and AM. Why don't I have a 'right' to be on the radio? Please show me the Constitutional foundation for that statement. So-called 'Radio Schools' mass-produce cloned screamers, human robots who say and play what they're told to by Corporate a**holes whose musical tastes are extremely limited. It's the age of American Idol and safe, cookie-cutter performers. FM Rock began as a real alternative to the Billboard Magazine mentality, and reflected the spirit of the late 60's. When the $$ poured in, so did Wall Street. You defend contemporary radio if you want, but I'd rather listen to my neighbor's Mp3's in mono than Mylee Virus in surround-sound. PS- You don't have to go to school for that license- it's free- you wuz robbed!
You're talking about a Radio-Operator's Permit. That just allows you to talk on the air. Those were always FREE. You don't have to go to school for that either. You wuz robbed! You have to be rich to get a license to start up a station and get call letters, or you could start a "Religious" station and claim it's a "community non-profit". The FCC falls for this all the time, while refusing to license anything to the left of Bill Krystol. The tech revolution in transmitters could easily transform the airwaves overnight. The ruling class has always used radio to define community 'reality'. They are leery of sharing the power to define reality (and make some $$) with other citizens. This needs to be remedied.
How soon will it be before the music companies come asking for a government bailout. These incredibly smart Music Executives are still trying to sell CD's to make money when the market has moved to digital devices. Is G W Bush running these Music companies.
Sometimes it seems like capitalists want to destroy everything good. All the music that I have purchased over the last two years, either as a download or a CD, was from an artist Pandora turned me on to via the Musical Genome Project. My wife had a job that's all hours, and I work one that takes up too much of my time, and I run a business. I don't have time to either listen to the stuff on radio that the record companies are paying to be played, or trying to hunt it down on the internet. I haven't been to a music store in over 5 years, because I haven't had the time, and they are going out of business. My taste in music is eclectic, and I almost never hear any station on the radio that does it for me, but Pandora does. Just as I am an advocate of all pay per view television, I would rather pay a premium on my annual internet service to have Pandora than to have to go back to kowtowing to the interests of middlemen who don't care about music at all.
IT'S OVER. Record companies with their mafia ways have destroyed themselves by chasing away their customers. It's a sinking ship. Good riddance. Screw the fans and screw the artists.
I think it all started when Casey Kasem retired from American Top 40. Didn't it used to air on Sundays from Nine AM til Noon? From the time I was eight or nine until I left home it was the best way to get a sampling of all different genres of music that had the crossover appeal to make the Hot 100 in the Billboard Charts. Those days are gone. The records don't climb anymore, there is no real build up or anticipation for new records. Established artists that would pump out sometimes two or three in a year now wait five, six, seven, or seventeen years between releases. The marketplace has truly dried up.
That stinks. Unlike most every other company, Pandora actually has a service that is great. Broadcast radio has gone to hell except for a few college stations.
stop listening to commerical radio when they started playing more Commercial per hour than songs.
Fark the American music industry anyways: g reedy p igs and drugged out overpaid stars
Lots of top Internet Radio stations out of Europe, Eastern Europe, and the East. Wait when China catches on to the dearth of product here when SoundExchange k ills American Internet Radio.
American media is obsolete
Broadcast radio and TV are obsolete
Boycott POP MUSIC. It mostly s ucks anyways.
That's sad as Pandora is not only excellent, but since it only plays or features one cut from any given artist it is a great way for those trying to break into the mainstream if there still is a mainstream to get exposure if they are similar in style to the artists you selected for your stations play list...
I found a lot of new artists mostly finger style guitar players I hadn't heard of and I know of many as I am an old player in that style among others, and so would have or have purchased their CD's or paid to download them...it all started when I was looking for a Fred Niel Song..Pandora will sometimes play other cuts from the same CD but you never know when and it can't be downloaded so what's the problem...?
So it's Fred Niel radio at Pandora go check it out...
There is also Stumble Upon Audio as well Google that many styles and just one cut from any given artist..
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First Posted: 08-16-08 03:40 PM | Updated: 09-16-08 05:12 AM