An interesting post on Broadstuff about Pandora, the web-radio service whose extremely high royalty payments may force it out of business:
it’s clear that Pandora and its ilk will live – it’s far too good to lose – [so] it will just go to the P2P freenet if this practice continues, thus hurting the Industry even more in the medium term. If ever there is a case study of a short sighted tactic to shoot yourself in the foot strategically, this is it.
The problem is that Pandora doesn’t pay the same royalties as other forms of radio, as the Washington Post reports:
Last year, an obscure federal panel ordered a doubling of the per-song performance royalty that Web radio stations pay to performers and record companies.
Traditional radio, by contrast, pays no such fee. Satellite radio pays a fee but at a less onerous rate, at least by some measures.
Comments
0 responses to “Could shutting down Pandora open Pandora’s box?”
You fail to appreciate the subtle cunning of the recording industry. If they manage to get troublesome purveyors of new technology to shut down, then everyone will go back to buying CDs as God intended and they’ll be rolling in money again!
P2P?? La-la-la, they can’t hear yoooouuu….
Heh. I really don’t get the way royalties have been set for online radio. You’d think at least *somebody* in the room would have said “hang on a minute! We’re being fucking ridiculous here! Think of how much money we could earn!”
In other news, Metallica became available on Napster today. Several years after appearing on iTunes, and even more years since anybody gave a fuck :)
You’d think at least *somebody* in the room would have said “hang on a minute! We’re being fucking ridiculous here! Think of how much money we could earn!â€
You would. But in my experience, it’s very rare for anyone in the corporate world to state the bleedin’ obvious, even when everyone knows what it is. It’s a kind of collective lack of responsibility fostered by the bureaucracy.