Slashdot Mirror
Pandora Pays Artists $0.001 Per Stream, Thinks This Is "Very Fair"
journovampire writes with this story about how much artists make on Spotify. "Pandora founder Tim Westergren has claimed that the company is paying out 'very fair' sums to artists, despite its per-stream royalty weighing in at just one sixth of Spotify's. The digital personalized radio platform has previously gone on-record as saying that it pays music rights-holders approximately $0.0014 for each play of their tracks: Westergren blogged in 2013 that Pandora pays ‘around $1,370 for a million spins’. That’s around 80% smaller than Spotify’s per-stream payout, which officially stands somewhere between $0.006 and $0.0084."
Most radio stations are paid to play songs not the other way around:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Trawl the used CD shops and garage sales, et al and then rip them yourself, create your own playlist and use your portable music player, no internet connection required....
See this page, which has much more information, graphical breakdown of who gets what, etc.
Oh no... it's the future.
For that matter, how much do artists get paid each time I listen to a track on a CD?
Hmmm, let's see: Artists get about 10% of retail
A CD costs $10, and say there are ten tracks on the CD.
Thus, each track costs $1, and the artists earns ten cents per track.
Most of my CDs were purchased at least ten years ago. I have no doubt I have listened to many of those tracks at least 100 times (those that were purchased more recently obviously don't have the same number of "listens", but - barring sudden death or deafness - I expect they will in time).
So the artist gets about $0.001 (1/10th of a cent) every time I listen to a track.
That's slightly less than Pandora pays and 6 times less than Spotify. Even assuming they get slightly better rates and I listen to the tracks far less frequently, the artists are still earning about as much money each time I listen to a track on CD (well, okay, ripped to MP3 but you know what I mean).
You could argue that the percent the artist is earning is far too low - that the middlemen are siphoning off too much into their own pockets - but that's a different issue. As it stands, it seems to me that online streaming services are paying them about the same (if not more) than they might get from more traditional sales, at least if you calculate based on the number of times a song is heard.
Maybe measuring "per listen" (stream) isn't the optimal way of calculating revenue.
$0.0014 is not 1/1000 of a penny.
You do know Pandora has a very inexpensive ($3.99/mo) option that eliminates all advertisements and comes with a few fringe benefits, right?
I haven't heard an ad on Pandora in 6 years.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Pandora subscriptions used to be $3.99/mo; they've raised it for new subscribers to $4.99/mo (really breaking the bank now), but existing subscribers keep the original rate.
Performers get zero payments for songs played on the radio (http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/2014/08/didnt-know-radio-royalties/). The authors of the songs (music and lyrics) do get paid. The payments to the rights holders (authors) of the music get paid from radio at a rate which is somewhere around $0.0003 per listener (give or take about 300% - source: http://davidtouve.com/2011/12/...).
In contrast, a permanent digital download and a CD (which can be played as many times as you like) have the same one time rate of $0.096 per track. This is set by law and is called a mechanical right.
So lets see what kind of relative value we have to a CD or PDD:
One radio listener, one listen = $0.0003, iow a permanent right "breaks even" at 320 listens
For Pandora and Spotify, they have to pay the entire chain - producers, artists, authors, promoters, etc.
If we scale the total fees using an album model, with a typical album costing $9.99 and having 12 tracks, of which 30% goes to the retailer, the value of a "track" is $0.583, or about 6x the amount paid for the author on that track. (you can argue the specifics, but if you're buying tens of millions of CDs worth of songs, you'd better get pricing that it *at least* this good)
So at that 58.3c/permanent track...
One pandora listener, one listen = $0.0014, break even is at 416 listens
One spotify listener, one listen = $0.007, break even us at 83 listens.
Radio has to play that track for 1920 listens to match the total compensation paid by the two streamers.
What does online streaming look like now? Pandora is slightly below Radio in their compensation per track to everyone they pay. You might contend that Pandora "finds" new artists better due to their model instead of radio playing whatever they're given to promote, and therefore provides slightly more value. Spotify, OTOH, lets you choose just what you want - you can play Brittney Spears all day, over and over - and therefore it's more like buying a track. And if you were to hit 83 plays on a track, you'd have been better off just buying the track. 83 plays seems like a lot, but that's over an entire lifetime - actually lifetime plus 70 years in copyright.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
People keep complaining about stuff like this without realizing that no one is forcing artists to list themselves on Pandora at all.
You don't have to put your music on their service. At all.
If you did put your music on their service then you agreed to whatever their rate was at that time.
END OF STORY SHUT THE FUCK UP.
If you don't like the rate now, then tell that to pandora and if they don't give you more money then either suck it up or leave.
Again... End of fucking story.
Let me put the prices in some perspective. I can go to Youtube, search any song by just about anyone, and find that song often listed by the publisher of that artist... and I can listen to that song over and over again for free.
So... Where is the money coming from that pays these artists? The ad revenue from non paying users? On a per ad basis you're talking about a tiny amount of money. And then you have to keep in mind that a user could listen to several songs between each ad. Which means that ad revenue has to be split between all those artists and that is only after Pandora has gotten enough to meet their bottom line. All things considered, the price is not unreasonable.
Does it suck that artists aren't making the record company money they used to make? Perhaps... but that's over and done with. The day of the rock god is over. Accept it.
If you want to be a professional musician these days then you have to crowd fund yourself. Set up a website, distribute exclusive content through it, do fan requests, interact with your users, and try to sustain yourself with a subscription model if you can. That... or try to sustain yourself with live performances. The record deals are gone. You're not going to buy yourself islands with your guitar unless you're very lucky.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Not anymore my friend. They got rid of the Grandfathering a few months ago. I had quite the e-mail exchange back and forth with them about it.
It's still a bargain at that price of course, but I still wasn't happy about it....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.