Pandora Radio's Last Stand

[Epyon MX]

Giant of Internet Radio Nears Its 'Last Stand'
Pandora, Other Webcasters Struggle Under High Song Fees

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 16, 2008; Page D01
OAKLAND, Calif. -- Pandora is one of the nation's most popular Web radio services, with about 1 million listeners daily. Its Music Genome Project allows customers to create stations tailored to their own tastes. It is one of the 10 most popular applications for Apple's iPhone and attracts 40,000 new customers a day.

Yet the burgeoning company may be on the verge of collapse, according to its founder, and so may be others like it.

"We're approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision," said Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora. "This is like a last stand for webcasting."

The transformation of words, songs and movies to digital media has provoked a number of high-stakes fights between the owners of copyrighted works and the companies that can now easily distribute those works via the Internet. The doomsday rhetoric these days around the fledgling medium of Web radio springs from just such tensions.

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.

As for Pandora, its royalty fees this year will amount to 70 percent of its projected revenue of $25 million, Westergren said, a level that could doom it and other Web radio outfits.

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[Reifel Tower]

Damn.. I love this service. I use it all the time on the phone.

What an opinion from a rockstahhhh?

Well too bad Im going to give it anyway..

the business model for the music industry needs to change. Its antiquated.

Music should be free to an extent. Well at least a digital copy. If you want a piece of hardware (cd etc) then that should have some type of price.

If the product is good, people will spend on it. Concerts, videos, glam... thats where the income needs to be generated from.

I could go on but my opinion sucks...

As a side note, as I read more and more of the posts on this board, you guys are a good bunch of people. Im enjoying my stay here.

Thanks for having me.

[Peench]

Reifel - I totally agree with you! The music industry needs to change with the time - they needed to change years ago. They're still holding on to a system that the general public doesn't want.

Glad you made it here and glad you are enjoying your stay!!

[Crippler]

I just starting using Pandora last week. I like it. It makes me laugh too. It will play some old ass, old school shit that takes me back to junior high. It also gave me a vision of Wonder breaking and poppin' on a piece of cardboard while wearing parachute pants.