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Sparkle (0)
If new music is created and nobody can find it, does it make a sound?
Time was you could listen to alternative radio and discover new tunes. Time was you could spend hours browsing the record store, digging up arcane and obscure artists. Time was the music could be found. But now it seems like all the radio stations are playing the same 20 songs (and a zillion commercials). Now CD departments are shrinking and disappearing from the stores. And now internet radio may be about to disappear. If that happens, how will you discover new music?
I had tried Pandora back when it launched. It was ... okay, but not great, and I let it go. But last month, when the iPhone apps came alive, and I found the Pandora app sitting there, I ended up revisiting the "music genome" service ... and found that they are doing much better at finding music I like than they ever did a year or so ago.
In fact, Pandora now is fabulous! After years of living in a music wasteland, with crap on the radio, worn-out "classics" on satellite, and pretty much nothing to be found on iTunes or in the local store, I rediscovered new music (and even ended up buying some). Pandora has been an incredible resource for introducing to me new music I never would have encountered otherwise.
Of course, that means it's too good to stick around, right?
Via the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Last year when the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board substantially hiked the royalty fees for songs that are Webcast, online broadcasters sounded an alarm. At the very least, they said, the raised fees would force some online radio stations to cap their audiences. At worst, the broadcasters warned, the royalty board could end up writing Internet radio’s swan song.
Now it looks like those grim predictions may come to pass. The founder of one of Internet radio’s leading lights, Pandora, tells The Washington Post that Web royalties may soon force his station out of business. The fees now soak up 70 percent of Pandora’s $25-million annual revenue, according to Tim Westergren. “We’re approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision,” he says.
What’s striking is that Pandora is no fly-by-night operation: The Web-radio service, which lets users build radio stations to match their own tastes, reaches about a million listeners every day, and its recently created iPhone application has become one of the most popular downloads for the device. But the rules of the marketplace, as currently drawn up, are none too favorable to online broadcasters. Terrestrial radio stations don’t have to pay per-song royalties, and satellite radio providers pay only small fees. But by 2010, Webcasters can expect to pay between two and three cents per hour per listener.
Michelle Wolverton offers some context:
Pandora faces closing the lid on it’s popular streaming radio service after the CRB, earlier this year, tripled the fees due to SoundExchange. Each time a streaming service plays a song they have to pay a small fee to Soundexchange. Soundexchange is deeply associated with the RIAA, who continuously acts like the bully on the playground. Making all the rules and taking your lunch money to boot....
...I support 100% that artists make money from being played ANYWHERE. I know musicians who are struggling to keep up in the daily grind. I also know that there are a few who have passed along their music to Pandora so that new fans can be reached. I’ve also discovered new music over at Pandora and would hate to see them close their doors. I don’t think that anyone in internet radio objects to paying fees for playing songs, but suddenly requiring internet radio to pay 3x the fees that the did for streaming is unbelievable. Yet, it’s done.
Oh, and your regular AM and FM stations? They aren’t getting hit with the same outrageous fees. SoundExchange and RIAA are acting unfairly because they are scared of what internet radio is doing for independent artists at the same time being damn greedy with what shouldn’t primarily go to them, but to the artists that they “represent”. A lot of the time that money doesn’t reach the artist because Soundexchange “can’t find them“.
Techdirt has a dark analysis of all this:
The RIAA knew exactly what it was doing in pushing these higher rates: it was killing off alternative routes to promoting non-RIAA music. The RIAA labels have
