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Pandora Shares Artist Payment Figures
An anonymous reader writes "Today in a blog post, Pandora has shared some details of the fees they pay to musical artists for playing songs over their music streaming service. Over 2,000 different artists will pull in $10,000 or more in the next year, and 800 will get paid over $50,000. They provided a few specific examples as well. Grupo Bryndis, who has a sales rank on Amazon of 183,187 (in other words, who is not at all a household name), is on track to receive $114,192. A few earners are getting over $1 million annually, such as Coldplay and Adele. 'Drake and Lil Wayne are fast approaching a $3 million annual rate each.' The post segues into a broader point about the age of internet radio: 'It's hard to look at these numbers and not see that internet radio presents an incredible opportunity to build a better future for artists. Not only is it bringing tens of millions of listeners back to music, across hundreds of genres, but it is also enabling musicians to earn a living. It's also hard to look at these numbers, knowing Pandora accounts for just 6.5% of radio listening in the U.S., and not come away thinking something is wrong. ... Congress must stop the discrimination against internet radio and allow it to operate on a level playing field, under the same rules as other forms of digital radio.'"
Every day I listen to Pandora on the way to/from work. Inevitably I will hear the same track, often more than once and skip it. I use Pandora to discover new artists related to the well known artist I entered. Obviously if Pandora keeps playing the same tracks from this artist they will have to pay them top dollar, if they play obscure and less known (cheaper per track I assume) they will make me happy and lower expenses. I blame Pandora for this problem, not the artists.
Well then what in the world am I doing wasting time writing software?!? Time to pull the old Casio out of the closet and lay down some tunes!
Better known as 318230.
I have been paying them $36 a year. This is (almost) the only money I've spent on music in my life.
Congress rightly sees Pandora as the work of the devil and and another way for the hackers that operate on the "series of tubes" to get more free stuff.
it is also enabling musicians to earn a living
If you call 800 people earning more than $50k a viable industry then I have some Florida swampland to sell you. Sounds like less than 1% of all the musicians in the world are not living in their mother's basement...
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
My family runs an internet radio service and I have to do the accounting for them each month. The article is referring to the fact that royalty accounting is handled in a way which makes it specifically designed to not work on the internet.
Congress created SoundExchange corporation to make sure that "artists" get paid for internet radio use, however royalties on the net are astronomically higher than broadcast. For a commercial broadcaster, you owe SoundExchange $0.0021 for EACH SONG that EACH USER listens to. It's a royalty of $0.0021 / song*listener. This actually makes it so that your royalty costs scale completely linearly with increasing number of listeners (high variable cost, low fixed cost), which is basically the complete opposite of terrestrial broadcast where your fixed cost is your giant antenna and royalties are estimated and often fudged (high fixed cost, low variable cost). This makes economics of scale much more difficult for the commercial webcaster than the terrestrial broadcaster. With all the influence the RIAA has over Congress it would seem that this was intentional. It seems like a classic case of regulatory capture.
Note that this is IN ADDITION to annual fees that go to performing rights groups such as ASCAP and BMI. Those fees are paid annually, but they are generally lower than the SoundExchange fee.
800 musicians divvy up $50k among themselves? Must be Somalian music.
Just ask yourself one ethical question: if you can get it free, are you paying for it anyway because you can't sleep at night.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
is just like regular radio - a very, very small number make the very big bucks. A not very much larger number make the big bucks. Most make a pittance.
Drake and Lil Wayne are fast approaching a $3 million annual rate each.'
This part of the original submission got my attention. The submitter added the italics for emphasis, implying that they don't deserve it.
Drake and Wayne, good on you.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
There are thousands of small internet radio stations, many make no profits or even loose money and they are suppose to pay artists and labels huge payments. Many of these kind of stations play independent artists and they don't even receive any of they money paid back to the recording artists unions. It's just a overly burdensome tax trying to prevent small internet broadcasters from existing and pulling listeners away from top 40 radio. Of course the simple fix, when stations are finally discovered and told to pay royalties, they just move their streaming location to some off shore web hosting company. They are then exempt from this US law.
Pandora's problem is that they're cutting out the middlemen. Middlemen tend not to like that very much, especially given that most of the people in our economy are one kind of middleman or another. Money directly to people working? That's unamerican. That's communism. That's... well, you get the idea.
Copyright law exists principally for one reason anymore these days: Middlemen. Oh sure, they talk about the artists, but there's no such thing as an artist under copyright law anymore. They're all contractors -- and their art actually isn't art anymore, they're "works for hire". I shouldn't have to explain how RIAA fucks artists, but for those who've been living under a rock until just now, let me give you a hint: It starts with a 'c', ends with a 't', and has a lot of legal language in between that says you (the artist) brings the lube, and they bring the butt hurt. Oh, and don't bother trying to look elsewhere: It's exclusive. Just you and me baby. And it will not be over quickly. And you will not enjoy it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Excellent news! This article cites real, unassailable numbers-- much of them in *dollars*. There is ample statistical basis to draw many, many well founded conclusions. These conclusions will affect many types of business, economic models, political systems, artistic expressions, and maybe even sports. I would humbly suggest that every single one of those conclusions bodes well for the careers of (stereo)typical readers of this site.
Enjoy!
Pandora's problem is their love of Apple's minimalist design philosophies.
In the early days of Pandora they'd occasionally post a blog entry about improvements to their song selection algorithms. These were always met with endless replies from people saying it just wasn't working for them. Many people wanted more options, like to choose the specific song attributes they're interested in hearing. Many others wanted to give more specific feedback than simply "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." I'd personally love a "never play the same song twice" option, as I too mainly use Pandora for music discovery. Anyway, eventually one of their blog posts acquired so many replies from people complaining about the performance of the service that they quickly posted something completely different and never again mentioned anything relevant to their service on their blog.
Anyway, from what I gathered back then when they were actually talking about things, they love the "simplicity" of Apple's design, and thus seek to imitate it. One of the core Apple designs is that customization options are a no-no because they might confuse users. Instead you choose just one way that something works, and it "just works" that way, whether it does what any particular person wants or not. Thus the advanced control over the song selection process that people want is completely out of the question. You're going to hear repeats because they assume that the average listener wants it to work like a radio station that plays their favorite music, and so that's how it's going to work, even if something a little different would work better for some users.
Also, while it's difficult to claim to know without seeing the functionality of their software, I suspect their song selection engine assigns weights to how important each musical quality is that are identical for each user. In other words, they've decided that people think that vocal styles matter a certain amount, and instrumentation matters a certain amount, and the process makes no attempt to determine how much these things matter for any particular user. Thus, if you don't judge music the same way everyone else does, Pandora doesn't seem very effective. ...and for me it isn't. I tend to listen to hundreds upon hundreds of songs before it plays one new song that I like which I haven't heard before.
As for why I think I know so much about it, back when they had their "backstage" web site, I wrote a robot to scan all of the pages (they had no robots.txt at the time) and record the half-dozen song attributes listed for each song, then applied my own song selection algorithm to the data, judging the results by listening to the 30 second samples from the web site. Despite that I only had a half-dozen attributes per song, compared to the hundreds per song that Pandora claims to have, the results from my own algorithm were on par with what I got from Pandora. I thought about writing to them and asking for access to their database, but despite throwing everything I could at the problem, I never could get results that were obviously better than their own with the limited data I had. Thus I didn't think I'd have any luck convincing them I could do any better than they were doing. (They certainly weren't open to the idea that they could improve things on their blog.)
It's really quite sad. They've invested a lot in creating an in-depth analysis of a large catalog of music, but they insist on not using that data to it's fullest potential, simply because someone likes clean and simple user interfaces without a lot of confusing options.
Sometime about two or three years ago I noticed the song selection take a distinctive turn for the worse, as any time I enter a song from any of half of my favorite artists, I end up with a station that simply will not play anything other than Christian music. Thus I hear nothing but "God," "Jesus," "Lord," and "Hallelujah" which, as an atheist, annoys me to hell. I like music with lyrics that aren't depressing, and a
Pandora is the shit. Once you build up a couple stations with some artist seeds and some likes and dislikes, it can find you some really cool stuff. I found several of my now favorite bands this way. I have one station for rock/metal and one for hip-hop. Mixing the two makes for a nice every-other-one experience with a decent balance of new stuff and old favorites.
I was never really happy with the web interface, but it's better now since they moved away from Flash. Linux users should check out Pithos, a simple and lightweight GTK Pandora client. The best thing about it is it shows the next few songs in the playlist so you know what's coming up (plus no ads plus unlimited skip). The day I started using Pithos was the day I signed up for a year of Pandora One. The official Android client's not too bad either.
I'm not really one to buy music; Pandora has saved me a lot of torrenting. There's no way I could afford to buy albums from all my favorites, so nice to know that for my $36/year the musicians will get at least something for their troubles.
Well, that may be you. Just y'day, I bought 12 songs - all by artists I never knew but discovered just because of Pandora - from Amazon or Google. Of course there will be repetition, if you keep listening to one station. Even with one station, you can fine tune it further by up and downvoting songs you like/dislike and it will suddenly discover new songs based on your adjustments. Also, you can create multiple stations as you keep on finding different songs/styles/artists/composition.
I have been using Pandora for 4 years now, and it has expanded my musical boundaries beyond what I could have with traditional (friends/TV/media/ads/pimping money) means. There are so many great artists out there that hardly anybody knows - and I bet they are benefiting from this as much as I do.
Now, talking about the problems - have you tried to understand their problems - where big labels are milking them without providing anything back to them by forcing them to throw up major part of their income under some obscure last century laws?
It's definitely not their problem - it's a system-wide fuck up, where old companies and labels wont let anyone else redefine the market by providing innovative technology such as Pandora's.
Dear Pandora Visitor,
We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.
Pandora's biggest issue is that they're still blocking everyone outside of the US. When they finally wake up, the entire market will already be taken by other players like Last.fm or Spotify, which is a shame because Pandora does seem like a nice service.
as if it were any different in the era of cassette tapes or LPs or CDs or player piano reels?
as if it were any different in the age of patronage and wealthy benefactors in the era before mass media?
here's some news for you: 1% of artists ever made a healthy living as an artist in all of human history, right now, and for all future time periods and societies
but here is the big difference: the long tail. that's the new thing
look at the picture here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail
the green part, the fat part of the tail, existed in the era of media conglomerates, say 1930-1980. so your
10 big bands made millions, and
100 made a couple hundred thousand,
and that's that. everyone else lived in their mom's basement
what pandora/ slacker/ etc/ the internet allows, what was not possible before the internet, is the yellow part in that chart: the long thin trailing part of the tail
so now, in 2010, you still have
10 bands making millions,
100 bands making hundreds of thousands. and now also possible due to the internet is:
1,000 bands making tens of thousands
10,000 bands making thousands
100,000 bands making hundreds, and
1,000,000 bands making tens of dollars
big deal? yeah, big deal: with a more fluid, smaller barrier of entry, that guy making a few hundred has enough positive feedback to maybe move up to the rarified few making hundreds of thousands. and we, the consumer, have a bigger, richer bounty to consume and appreciate and enjoy, that WE choose, not some suit in a music corporation who signs this band but that band due to random reasons that may have nothing to do with actual quality for us the consumer
and also, art is an aspirational pursuit: you do it because you love it, and this should be rewarding in and of itself. nobody does it for the money. well, maybe to get in a chick's pants, but if you do it just for the money, you're a moron, because there is no money in art, there never was. only those lucky few that create something that people find themselves demanding by hook or by chance, are lucky to live the life of a well-paid artist. it is always the exception, and always will be the exception. and really: do you want to listen to music by a guy who is doing it just for financial returns? for every REAL artist, it is about the art, and always will be. and a few get chosen to live financially happy for that. the rest starve, as it always was, as it is, and always will be
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you told the young Aubrey Drake Graham that someday he'd be making "only" $1 million a year as a musician, he'd probably be thrilled.
"Congress must stop the discrimination against internet radio and allow it to operate on a level playing field, under the same rules as other forms of digital radio.'"
I had to wonder about this quote at the end. Most of the summary talks about how musicians are earning money from Pandora, but Pandora then says that they want the fees lowered for internet radio so that they (wait for it) can pay less money to the musicians. It was just weird. It was like "Hey! Look how much money were giving to the artists!" followed with "um, could we pass legislation to lower how much we pay them"? I'm not actually saying that the fees shouldn't be lowered. It's just a weird flip that they make. I've also heard that musicians aren't terribly happy with the cut they get from stuff like radio.
Also, the summary states, "Over 2,000 different artists will pull in $10,000 or more in the next year, and 800 will get paid over $50,000.", but I had to wonder how many ways that money gets split. For example, if we ignored the middle-men (i.e. labels) and the money was split between four band members and one manager, you've split the money five ways. If 2,000 artists are pulling in over $10,000 next year -- well, assuming the low-end of $10,000, that works out to $2,000 per person per year. When you consider the costs of recording the music in the first place, that really isn't much. Admittedly, there are other revenue streams for musicians, so I'm agnostic about the question of how much money musicians should earn when radio/internet radio wants to stream their music.
Grupo Bryndis, who has a sales rank on Amazon of 183,187 (in other words, who is not at all a household name), is on track to receive $114,192.
My first thought on reading this was that there's some error. Pandora states that 800 musicians get paid over $50,000 - that means that Grupo Bryndis has to be in the top 800 musicians - probably somewhere around the 400th highest paid artist on Pandora - even though he's ranked 183,187 on Amazon? Well, Grupo Bryndis is a Mexican band ( "Grupo Bryndis is an internationally known Mexican musical group... Grupo Bryndis is also a Latin Grammy Award winner for best album in 2007." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grupo_Bryndis ) - of course they're not a household name to Americans or Europeans. If they're getting that much money from Pandora, I'd bet that the group is a household name in Mexico, though. I'd also bet the gap between the Amazon sales rank and Pandora's rank is a reflection of their fanbase - since it's a Mexican band and his Mexicans listeners (because they tend to be poor) probably look for lower-cost alternatives to buying, or maybe the Venn-Diagram intersection between Amazon customers and Grupo Bryndis listeners is small (perhaps Amazon isn't popular in Mexico).
Why are ppl using the garbage service of pandora and not using spotify I do not know.
Pandora isnt smart enuf to figure out I hate Neil Young no matter how many times I fucken skip those tracks. And when it plays 10 tracks that sounds just like Neil Young in a row?
Wouldn't it be cheaper for Pandora to just buy CDs of their most popular music and mail them directly to the customers who play them the most? (Yes, I am joking.)
Grupo Bryndis is a BIG household name in the mexican community. Amazon's sales do not have anything to do with a group/artists being a household name or not.
LOLOL, it's funny people can come to conclusions through other sources, whether they are credible sources or not.
I'd be very interested in knowing some of your seeds. Do they include Evanescence, Paramore, and/or Skillet?
On the Christian side of things, most of it is Jump5, the rest from PureNRG. Despite being only two artists, they make up half of what I listen to. The vast majority of Jump5's songs don't mention God explicitly, though once you know they're a Christian artist, you kind of assume that's what the lyrics are about. "All I Can Do" is a good example, as there's nothing in the lyrics to indicate it is a religious song, yet knowing that Jump5 is a Christian artist, you rather have to assume that they're singing about God. PureNRG does a similar trick with about half of their songs, but then occasionally ruin one by tossing in a "Jesus" for no apparent reason.
On the non-Christian side, there's a lot of Hannah Montana (half of her songs are actually quite good, try "Are You Ready" for example), T-Squad, the various S Club's, a few Aaron Carter songs, some Steps, and a bunch of single tracks from many artists who only released one or two good songs, like "I Am what I Am" by Jonas Brothers, who otherwise produce nothing but garbage.
Overwhelmingly, they're all from teen artists, as it seems they're the only ones interested in releasing happy music with lyrics that aren't completely trivial. The occasional happy song from an adult artists tends to be nothing more than "I love you!" repeated endlessly, as seemingly the only time they're happy is when they're in love. Contrast that with something like Jump5's "Way of the World" which, sometime about the 2:30 mark, you realize you've never heard something so emotional that wasn't completely depressing. ...and I think that's what sets the music I like apart from most music. It's apparently easy to write an emotional song which is depressing, and so it seems that's what most artists do. Meanwhile, music that's meant to just be happy and fun, like Jump5's "Spinnin' Around," no one wants to take seriously.
Indeed, the only adult artist I'm aware of who likes to write happy songs that aren't just stupid is Colbie Caillat.
I also really like Danger Radio, but as their lyrics aren't exceptionally happy, I can't explain it other than to say the songwriting is exceptional and the lyrical content isn't particularly depressing. ...and I should also mention a band called "Hum" for exceptional songwriting, but I have to warn you that the lyrics are also exceptionally depressing.
For some reason, I don't feel as bad for downloading those songs from Pandora now.
I'd personally like to see the hard figures that Pandora is drawing these numbers from so that I can reach my own conclusions rather than be sheepishly led to a conclusion that obviously benefits Pandora. Furthermore, I'd like to see some basic statistical information on their payment rates to artists, including the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation. Then we could cross-reference those figures with what the average "big label" artist makes in royalties and we'd be left with a solid idea as to how "good for artists" Pandora really is.
I've found Pandora very lacking in variety. Tune in on the 80s channel a few times within a month and you'll hear cindi lauper within the first 10 songs every time. maybe it would be better if I used the thumbs but I don't sit at a screen when I listen. I really like the radio station concept for discovering new music but it got boring quick. I'm checking out Slacker these days.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.