p2pnet - rss feed: Pandora: on the brink of closing down
p2pnet news view Radio | RIAA News:- They must have aching hands on Fourteenth Street from high-fiving each other this morning.
I bet someone has even proposed another round of royalty forfeitures to finance champagne in the SoundExchange break room this afternoon.
Why?
Pandora says it is on the brink of turning out the lights.
That’s what Pandora founder Tim Westergren told the Washington Post. Pandora could shut down unless it can find some relief from the insanely high performance rates ordained last year by the CRB.
This certainly must be, at least from SoundExchange’s standpoint, a red-letter day in their struggle to see that recording artists (Labels? What labels? Forget the fact that labels get more than half the license revenue, this is all about the artists we can’t find 40,000 of)) are fairly compensated for streaming broadcasts of their recordings. After all, how many times has SoundExchange been able to, in one fell swoop, threaten the existence of a music performance program that all by itself represents literally millions of discrete channels of delivery.
Closing down millions of places to hear music is always in the best interests of artists and listeners, right? In what alternate universe does this make any sense?
Maybe there’s a way for Pandora to make more money without completely corrupting their vision. Westergren even suggests some possibilities in the Post article. Will it be enough to pay the SoundExchange bill that now, according to Westergren, equals 70% of their total revenue? I doubt it. I think Westergren doubts it too, or he wouldn’t be so pessimistic about the future.
In keeping with prior pronouncements, I’m sure SoundExchange bids all the folks at Pandora good luck in finding a “new hobby.”
They don’t say where their beloved artists are going to get heard on the radio and find the audiences to come to the shows and buy the music they make.
I guess they can find new hobbies, too.
Applying SoundExchange’s webcaster reasoning to artists, if they aren’t already making a living from music, they need to stop fooling themselves and get real jobs.
And the listeners? Hell, they can go back to filesharing, where nobody gets any royalties from anybody.
But this really isn’t about the listeners. This is about control of what we hear, and how we get to hear it. The operating precept here is “If you can’t hear it, you won’t buy it.” The missing logical piece that seems to have eluded SoundExchange and the RIAA is, “If you hear it and don’t like it, you still aren’t going to buy it.”
The death of Pandora will have an impact beyond simply removing a valuable way to hear new music. It will undoubtedly stifle financial backing for other good ideas that come down the pike.
There won’t be a “next” Pandora if the present one doesn’t survive. But that’s fine with SoundExchange. The fewer independent players on the field, the more the RIAA gets to control what gets played and what we get to hear.
Of course, there’s even a darker alternative rationale to consider. In this version, SoundExchange and its masters ride in at the eleventh hour to offer a discounted royalty rate. All Pandora needs to do to survive is give up an equity position in the service to their saviors. That way the labels not only get to control the playlists (because only their artists will be available), they get to share in the service’s revenue going forward.
In this scenario, the major labels go from being on the outside looking in to owning the inside, and it won’t cost them a dime of their own money.
The RIAA doesn’t seem able to make a dime from the digital exploitation of music, but when it comes to a good old analog protection racket scheme, there’s none better.
You see, if they get to control what gets played, it doesn’t matter if no one actually buys a copy of the recording, because the audience becomes irrelevant to making money.
There’s a well-known parallel from the world of terrestrial radio known as the “turntable hit;” a song that got played a lot on the radio but never generated much in the way of sales. At least that’s what they told the artists when it came time to give an accounting.
Giving the RIAA an equity share in Pandora to keep the service alive means the labels control not only what gets played, but how much money they make. It’s like printing their own money, and it’s all legal.
God Bless America as a place where an industry can save itself by having a democratically elected government establish a monopoly of, by, and for that industry.
In such a place, anything is possible, if you have the cash.
Which reminds me: if there’s a light at the end of Pandora’s tunnel, a further note in that Post article should have been enough to snuff it out.
Representative Hollywood Harold Berman (top right) being the mediator between SoundExchange and the webcasters should just be the punch line to a bad joke.
Berman has made it quite clear he’s been the record industry’s lapdog for years. He’s the sponsor of the terrestrial radio performance royalty legislation in the House.
Berman should have about as much credibility as an impartial mediator as a blind boxing referee.
Fred Wilhelms - p2pnet
[If the corporate music industry had any ethics, Wilhelms would be its ‘ethicist-in-chief,’ wrote CounterPunch’s Dave Marsh. Wilhelms is an entertainment attorney based in Nashville, Tennessee. You can contact him at fred.wilhelms @ gmail dot com. ]
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New York Times - xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, August , 2008
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August 19th, 2008 at 7:05 am
So:
- Pandora’s on the brink of closing down
- They want to slap DRM on streaming radio
- Muxtapes is also now shuttered to “sort out a problem with the RIAA”
Way to go, music industry! I hereby award you the “golden buggy whip” award for doing such a great job stifling innovation and creativity this month! All those artists you represent must be so proud to see you kill everything but top 40 radio, where they all can get airplay and promotion *totally* equally and fairly.
Have fun killing your industry, you idiots.
-b
August 19th, 2008 at 8:33 am
And for those that used pandora, may I recommend an alternative to finding music? Such as TPB? This shit is exactly what’s driving people away from paid for streaming services (even if those are paid for through ad revenue).
August 19th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Not much I care for that’s come out recently on the music scene. I’ve had a long time to get what I wanted, long before DRM ever came up. Greatest hit albums and re-releases don’t interest me. Covers done by other bands, no longer with enough originality to do their own stuff, don’t interest me either. They seem to be trying to copy off the original to gain fame but I take it as a lack of being to come up with their own stuff constantly. To me, that makes bands today not of sufficient interest to invest the time to find out about them.
Nor do I listen much to radio now-a-days. The replay city is just down right boring. Same tunes, every hour. Plenty of stuff I don’t want, such as ads, but nothing new to inspire me to go check out new stuff. I’m afraid the music industry has shot themselves in the foot. While they’re doing their best to eliminate the competition, they’ve also done well at eliminating hearing any new tunes with regularity. What was once a really get way to hear exposure to new material has dried up and no longer has a place for new stuff. With that my interest has waned in music. Lack of interest is directly tied to lack of buying.
August 19th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
bh, you pretty much said what I was going to. I can’t figure out why the “industry” thinks it is a good idea to crush the most promising and well received music delivery services. I have been spending a few bucks here and there on .mp3 files that I heard on Pandora. I can pretty much guarantee that I would never heard these songs on “status quo” radio and obviously would not have purchased them.
Yeah, the board room members are hi-fiving each other. “We just closed down a business that could have made us BILLIONS!! And we wouldn’t have even had to lift a finger to make all that loot. Just sit back and let it roll in… Man, we are GENIUSES!”
August 19th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
This has been repeated a couple of different places but the ‘big picture’ is that its mostly about revenue control and preserving the already failed business models for the music industry.
I know, it’s a tired cliche — the “failed music industry model” and “racket protection” — but their actions and words are so transparent that it’s hard to miss. They’re simply not that innovative, it really is that simple.
-RIAA/SoundExchange look after the big labels they represent.
-Services like Pandora, imeem, last.fm, etc. - they all expose consumers to a lot of great music, in an insanely efficient manner. A vast majority of their users have said “I’ve purchased music because of this site” — but the bulk of it isn’t on RIAA labels. And they know this. The bulk of it is on the long tail of smaller indie, non-top-40 artists.
-There’s only so much ‘earshare’ to go around, so its in RIAA/SE’s best interest to hamstring innovations that aren’t serving that top-40 segment. The fewer channels out there, the greater the ‘earshare’ they’re going to get, which equates to money… so …
-So they attack webcasting. They attack satellite. They get pissed about iTunes, which was also a smashing f***ing success. They push for DRM. They make Pandora block non-US listeners. They audit Last.fm. They sue colleges and p2p users. They force stations to comply to arcane and complex reporting requirements. in short: They attack every goddamn thing they can — and they do it while pushing for a new performance tax on terrestrial radio. They see the sinking ship, so **anything goes** to prop up the failed model of controlling the entire music lifecycle: creation, promotion, distribution, taxation/royalty collection, and so on.
-Unfortunately our government handed SE/RIAA a bully pulpit from which to do all this with the performance right management/collection/distribution, without building in oversight. So the real insult is that SE gets to do all under the guise of federal copyright law and claiming “it’s in the best interests of the artists we represent”. Even though the vast majority of the artists are yelling “this is wrong, don’t touch these services, they are helping us sell records and gain fans you nitwits.”
So, yes, it’s a mess. A depressing mess.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
these are the people who sue single moms, and the just getting by college student…
these are the people trying to supress free thinking
these are the people who have become the big-brother of the music industry
the last top 40 cd i bought was Coldplay “Viva La Vida” i cannot even tell you which “Top 40″ cd i bought before that…
how long until other sites get shut down?
why not attack yourself music industry? for attempting to force feed us garbage and tell us it is a five course meal?
we do not want britney, miley, the jonas bros., 50 cent some washed up has been who has done it for 50 years… or the “next big thing”
we want passionate art… made by passionate artists…
God Bless Radiohead.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Where is the outrage from the artists that they are not getting their fair share from the sweetheart direct licensing deals the labels are giving imeem and last.fm? I doubt the labels have informed the artists that they are getting screwed again. Yet the artists testify against the music lovers that run small internet radio stations, you know, people who actually care about the music. I’m almost to the point where I’m OK if SX and the RIAA shuts down independent internet radio if the artists get the shaft. All of this has soured this music lover on the entire shebang. Maybe I’ll play more golf and buy less records. Oops. The music industry loses another dedicated customer thanks to their lawyers and bean counters.
August 25th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Why would anybody give up equity in return for access to major label playlists?
This is absolutely insane.
Can you imagine what it would be like to do business in this vacuum, with a major record company?? Soon, you would find yourself without a company at all.
And do you think artists would get part of that acquired equity? Let’s try this- record labels play a piece of ‘their equity’ to all broadcasters for the promotional exposure of their artists.
In the end, if a fair and even set of domestic and international copyright laws are not passed, free of self-interested major recording companies, you will have 3 sets of web radio stations:
1.) Large, highly capitalized, web radio networks that simply do what the majors ask (same-old, same-old).
2.) Independent (mid-sized) web radio stations, that negotiate with individual artists and indie labels. But, these stations will be in such high-demand that unsigned artists will be in the same spot as with big stations.
3.) Tiny web stations that play only indie artists, who will agree to sign a license fee waiver. Not much exposure from stations with 4 or 5 listeners ..
Also, stop lumping web radio in with P2P networks.
They have almost nothing to do with each other.
Bill Wilkins, CEO
Melted Metal Web Radio
http://www.meltedmetal.com/