The latest example is how Pandora is pushing for a special law in Congress to slash musicians' royalties – and the tactics they are using to trick artists into supporting this unfair cut in pay.
Articles: Making Cents - 0 views
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I'm sure each generation of musicians feels they've lived through a time of tremendous change, but the shifts I've witnessed in my relatively short music career-- from morphing formats to dissolving business models-- do seem extraordinary. The first album I made was originally released on LP only, in 1988-- and my next will likely only be pressed on LP again.
Pink Floyd: Pandora's Internet radio royalty ripoff - 0 views
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We hope that many online and mobile music services can give fans and artists the music they want, when they want it, at price points that work. But those same services should fairly pay the artists and creators who make the music at the core of their businesses.
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Nearly 90% of the artists who get a check for digital play receive less than $5,000 a year. They cannot afford the 85% pay cut Pandora asked Congress to impose on the music community.
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http://oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2006/08/17/inside-pandora-web-radio.html - 0 views
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Pandora (which is also the name of the company) grew out of the Music Genome Project, which company founder Tim Westergren began six years ago.
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He became fascinated with the way directors described the music they were looking for, which led to his wondering what made people enjoy certain types of music. He asked himself, "If people haven't found any music that they love since college, and artists are struggling to find an audience, is there a role for technology to help bridge the gap?"
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Westergren started the Genome Project from the idea of creating a platform for connecting people with music that they'll love based on music they already enjoy. The project uses experts called "music analysts" to deconstruct music into its fundamental parts and capture the results into a database. Pandora has 40 professional musicians who come to the office every day and listen to one song at a time, analyzing each in anywhere from 200 to 400 dimensions. (The dimensions are somewhat different for each genre of music.)
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Literature Resource Center - Document - 0 views
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Morgan's an independent musician and his song "Better Angels" was among a number of his songs that got some 28,000 plays on Pandora.
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The song earned $1.62 in royalties over a 90-day period on Pandora, which is a very typical rate.
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Pandora, which is the number one Internet radio service, saw over $125 million in revenue last quarter, 55 percent more than the year before. But the company still isn't profitable in part because it pays over 60 percent of its revenues to acquire music.
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The power of music - 1 views
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Anthony Storr, in his excellent book Music and the Mind, stresses that in all societies, a primary function of music is collective and communal, to bring and bind people together
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People with Tourette's syndrome—including many I know who are professional musicians—may become composed, tic-free, when they listen to or perform music; but they may also be driven by certain kinds of music into an uncontrollable ticcing that is entrained with the beat
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There is a wide range of sensitivity to the emotional power of music, ranging from virtual indifference at one extreme (Freud was said to be indifferent to music, and never wrote about it), to a sensitivity that can barely be controlled. Individuals with Williams syndrome, for example, though they have severe visual and cognitive defects, are often musically gifted, and usually extravagantly sensitive to the emotional impact of music. I have seen few sights more extraordinary than a group of 40 young people with Williams syndrome breaking into uncontrollable weeping at tender or sad music, or uncontrollably excited if the music is animated.
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My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What ... - 0 views
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As a songwriter Pandora paid me $16.89* for 1,159,000 play of “Low” last quarter. Less than I make from a single T-shirt sale. Okay that’s a slight exaggeration. That’s only the premium multi-color long sleeve shirts and that’s only at venues that don’t take commission. But still.
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Soon you will be hearing from Pandora how they need Congress to change the way royalties are calculated so that they can pay much much less to songwriters and performers. For you civilians webcasting rates are “compulsory” rates. They are set by the government (crazy, right?). Further since they are compulsory royalties, artists can not “opt out” of a service like Pandora even if they think Pandora doesn’t pay them enough. The majority of songwriters have their rates set by the government, too, in the form of the ASCAP and BMI rate courts–a single judge gets to decide the fate of songwriters (technically not a “compulsory” but may as well be). This is already a government mandated subsidy from songwriters and artists to Silicon Valley. Pandora wants to make it even worse. (Yet another reason the government needs to get out of the business of setting webcasting rates and let the market sort it out.)
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get an actual business model
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Spotify, YouTube, Streaming Services Are Killing Digital Downloads | TIME.com - 0 views
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Now, with a deluge of music streaming services letting fans listen to songs for free, the digital download may be going the way of the CD and the cassette tape before it.
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U.S. digital track sales decreased for the first time ever in 2013, dropping from 1.34 billion to 1.26 billion, according to Nielsen SoundScan. CD sales also continued their ongoing decline, dropping 14 percent to 165 million. Digital album sales were stable, staying at 118 million sold last year. Meanwhile the number of songs streamed through services like Spotify, YouTube and Rhapsody increased 32 percent to 118.1 billion.
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Spotify just arrived on U.S. shores in the summer of 2011, but it has become a lightning rod for controversy thanks to a chorus of artists who decry that paying musicians a fraction of a cent per listen is unfair.
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