Hope this goes somewhere. This problem needs to be solved.

I wish someone would start charging broadcast radio royalties however. Broadcast radio has evolved into a limited playlist that plays the same songs so agressively that one could use it as a substitute to buying songs. With voice tracking and syndication, the local part of radio is gone. There is no reason to continue to give radio stations a break. They can't make money? Unlike Pandora, that is their own fault. Broadcast radio giants have made radio unenjoyable and let their product be devalued.

We listen to terrestial radio in desperation not pure choice in 2012. KROQ is absolute garbage and KCRW shares all their cool playlists with Spotify. Over the next 24 months cars will start to get wifi and eliminate the need for DJ's completely as the driver or his 1,2,3 friends in the car can dj to their hearts content.  

Pandora should get the same rates that radio does, end of story. How is this even a discussion?

Bomb terestrial radio.

What knucklehead Westergren doesn't get is that Broadcast radio gets off easy and should be paying the same rates as internet broadcasters.  The higher the better and the more to scale with over-the-air broadcast radio, the better.  If you can't afford to pay the necessary fees, you have a shitty business model.  Unlike the necessary bail-out of the automotive companies, a bail-out of internet dreamers is a bad bet.  Let Pandora fail.  They contribute practically nothing to the U.S. economy.

Really? And how is broadcast radio supposed to pay 60-70% of the revenue? Something tells me (a thing called logic) that all forms of radio would fail under royalty rates that high. Would artists really be better off without any forms of radio? I don't think so.

Honestly, what does it cost to run a radio station today anyway?

I guess if its broadcasting on the old AM/FM bandwidth, fine, exempt it, but if it's satellite or cable or on the net, its 100% automated anyway, and just a giant cash cow for the owners.

Honestly, it's high time for an anti-trust suit of mega proportions against Comcast, Google, Amazon, Clear Channel and similar monopolies in this country.

I would include Apple, but they have competitors on the hardware side, as well as their iTunes store, though their proprietary services are by nature anti-competitive. THeir store pays a LEGALLY BOUND PERCENTAGE at least, not some arbitrary royalty based on whether hipster netco CEO needs to buy his fat wife another car next week.

The public airwaves were supposed to be owned by the public, not by a tiny cabal of fatcats sitting at the end of massive spigots of money all frothing in their direction.

The only reason anyone's still making money in Hwood is because of the unions SAG, SWG, and the crews, remember that.

Musicians unions need to revive and demand the industry pay a living wage (once players writers etc meet a minimum standard of success, of course). Base the royalties off of that, or at least off of set percentage rates.

I'm so tired of these gatekeepers, like those at Pandora, acting like my pal when they reap millions impoverishing others. So Pandora is cooler than Comcast's music channels. So what.

THis has already ravaged the news/photo business, and, without laws, pay standards go down while the pay of the employees and the gateholders goes up. Dont feed your material into this system. You will 'get paid', but in amounts that will make you angrier than not getting paid at all.

According to Westegren...

'Fairness' = lower payouts from Pandora to Artists.

NOT higher rates for terrestiral radio.

Seems like this misses the point. A real 'fairness' bill would require that they pay the same, not that one rate be brought down to another rate, per se.

Don't you just love how lobbysists like Westegren frame the argument as 'fairness' when what they really mean is 'parity' at the lower payout to Artists rate? 

A real champion of Artists would be asking the bigger question about what the right rate is for all.  This is just a cheap plea for reduced rates cloaked in 'fairness' to lock-in all of the radio players at the prevailing lowest rate (which may not be in the right place in terms of 'fairness' to the artists).

Good spin, not buying it, Tim.

Actually, that's not true at all. He tried for quite a long time to make "fairness" mean all paid so the playing ground would be leveled. He failed, obviously. But at the same time he was aiming for lower rates. What is truly fair for all.

So he tried to do the right thing for a while, but then gave up and is now doing the wrong thing (trying to reduce all payments to artists down to the low/free level of terrestrial radio) b/c he thinks it can be done?

Ok, I get it, but why the deceptive name of 'fairness' instead of 'lowest' since he abandoned 'fairness' a while ago?

Pandora has to pick their battles. They don't have a lot of money and are constantly losing more. They can't fight everyone. Making broadcast radio pay royalties is an extremely expensive battle because they are protected by law and by the NAB. So they don't focus on that at the moment and instead on lowering their own rates. That is the one battle they must win in order to survive. I would not be surprised if they did finally get lower rates if they went after broadcast radio and tried to get them to pay too.

Pandora is not anti-artist. They just don't want to go out of business.

So your plan would involve Pandora and Terrestrial radio all going out of business?

Pandora is a public company and their financial reports are public and audited. They are paying out the ASS to the record companies and the business is not sustainable as a result. Things are unfair for Pandora, for sure.

BRAVO! 

Pandora Radio local storage reveals password and other data

Hash the passwords you impotent morons and then maybe you can talk about this "internet" that you want to belong to.

Pandora is not radio. It's a playlist service.

As such, it is completely justified that there be a different (higher) royalty rate for Pandora.

Sorry, no sympathy. 

- Versus

Thank you versus.

After multiple stories on this subject, nobody mentions this fact.

Pandora is different than terrestrial radio, it is different than spotify, different than rdio etc.

People can call it whatever they want, but at the end of the day it is (legally) a non-interactive service that is a type of radio. Technically all radio services are playlist services. They all have a playlist and play music from that playlist.

you all realize, of course, that congress is out of session and the next session pre-election is a "lame" session right?

This is a waste of everyone's time. If you call congress at all,ask them to focus on the people, not wall street.  This bill will never hit the floor and if it does, your congressperson has their head where it should not be.

I find your comments about your elected officials reprehensible, how dare you impugn the integrity of congress?

I would contact my representative right now, but I have a meeting down on K street. You know how that goes.

Pandora's federal filing in 2010 claimed over 36-million free users digesting music that Pandora must pay for. Pandora created that nightmare, NOT musicians. Pay for the music Pandora or stop giving it away.

They are not giving it away. They are letting people listen to it, not keep it. Problem is they have to pay far more to let people hear it than they should have to.

Streams are very different in that the listener can listen to a song as many times as they wish. With radio, that is dictated. Both generate money from ads. I'm guessing here but I'd bet that the avarage person listens to a purchased CD 100 times. So 100 plays of a song = $1.00 x 10 songs = $10.00 which is what most indie bands sells downloads and CD's for. Win win, it's the exact same thing as selling a CD for $10 and if stream / radio companies have a problem with that then sell ads for a higher price or go into another business. Listeners are listening because of the music we create. Without us they're out of business.

there are only 24 hours in the day, that's 1440 minutes. If we divide that number by 3 (the average length of a song) we get 480 songs played per day. 480 x .01 = $4.80 per day in royalties or $1752.00 per year. I don't understand what all the hoopla is all about.

"Without us (music) they're (the tech companies) out of business."

Without the companies who deliver recorded music to the public, musicians are busking on the street for quarters.   It's a symbiotic relationship.  

Except, the delivery-to-the-public companies have other content options besides music.  Look how much radio has moved to news/talk/sports over the last few decades.  Look how much content other than music moves over the Internet.

The problem for the music business is that delivery-to-the-public has ceased to be profitable.  iTunes might be profitable, but there is also some educated guessing that iTunes is just breakeven, or else a loss leader for Apple's phenomenonally successful hardware line.

Ya know, I'm not sure I have ever seen a industry where people dance in happiness as their business partners collapse.

Streams are very different in that the listener can listen to a song as many times as they wish. With radio, that is dictated. Both generate money from ads. I'm guessing here but I'd bet that the average person listens to a purchased CD 100 times. So 100 plays of a song = $1.00 x 10 songs = $10.00 which is what most indie bands sells downloads and CD's for. It’s the exact same thing as selling a CD for $10 and if stream / radio companies have a problem with that then sell ads for a higher price or go into another business. Listeners are listening because of the music we create. Without us they're out of business. There are only 24 hours in the day, that's 1440 minutes. If we divide that number by 3 (the average length of a song) we get 480 songs played per day. 480 x .01 = $4.80 per day in royalties or $1752.00 per year. I don't understand what all the hoopla is all about.

You can read the bill & weigh with a message to Congress here:

https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/hr6480

I would say instead of fighting to lower rates paid by internet radio services, that they raise rates on terrestrial radio/sattelite services. I mean, record companies have to pay to get their crappy pop played on Clearchannel stations (yes, payola does exist due to, you guessed it, loopholes!). So, record companies pay to get songs on terrestrial radio and satellite, then those companies pay peanuts to the artists (although if you land on a clear channel top 10 station, I'm sure it adds up fast). The amount paid to radio is much higher than the payouts, so terrestrial radio is getting a good deal. It makes competition for new services (ie-pandora and other internet radio companies that started up 4-5 years ago) very difficult. The barrier to entry is very hard when Pandora and the likes are paying much more with much less revenue and cash..

I say raise the rates for terrestrial/satellite to make it even, that way the artists maintain their current rates and get a little more. That's where the real fairness issue is.

That's all nice, but it does not address the problem Pandora faces. Broadcast radio can pay 100% of the revenue or even go out of business, but Pandora still has to pay 60-70% of their revenue and still can't turn a profit.

The biggest problem with making broadcast radio pay high rates is that the money simply is not there. Large market stations might be able to pay a small percentage of their revenue, but many stations are hardly breaking even. Some are not, but are being held onto to because they are part of clusters. Clear Channel is a big company, but if you look at their lack of actual profit you would notice that they are not making much money in the music radio business.

Pandora wants to end internet radio discrimination. Is that so much to ask for?

The rights holders are for the most part monopolists who try to charge the highest they can get away with.  They are the record companies who rarely, if at all, pay the artists out of the licensing fees that they get. 

They blame peer-to-peer downloading for their woes instead of how they resisted any new technology for the longest time.  Their business model is like the dinosaurs sticking their heads in the sand until they absolutely must take some action.  As monopolies they always opt for the best solution for themselves and the worst solution for the rest of us.

I ran an internet radio station on a service that is closing down at the end of the month after 2 years.  They never stated the reasons, but I suspect that the onerous licensing fees did them in. 

I bet I know what service that is. Pretty sad too because they were a good service. A lot of internet radio stations have been biting the dust lately and some service providers too. Until the rates are lowered I think this trend will only accelerate.

http://broadcastdigitalmanagement.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/tim-westergren-answer-your-fcking-phone/