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I don't mean to sound contentious.. but, uh, why is OP surprised? Music access quickly becoming a commodity. Pandora/Spotify do for music what Netflix did for movies. I mean, even Southpark did a show on this (viz. Blockbuster).

I'd say that the fact that the FM station paid OP 100x more than Pandora shows how hugely the FM/AM business models have failed and how for granted so many artists took being massively rich. Guess what, there are tons of talented people out there. Software is free, and everyone can compete. I'd say that's healthy. We're no longer stuck in the dark ages of information discovery (back when if something wasn't on the radio or on TV, no one had heard of it).

Also, ngoel36 said: "If your song stream convinced nobody to buy your song on iTunes or buy a ticket to your concerts, then you have bigger problems than Pandora."

This times a million. So your music is apparently awesome but you can't sell t-shirts or concert tickets (concerts are, after all, where the the real money is made).

"Why doesn’t Pandora get off the couch and get an actual business model instead of asking for a handout from congress and artists?"

I mean, this is just laughable, given how heavily the media industry is subsidized. Case in point: http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/05/07/the-government-is-no...




>I'd say that the fact that the FM station paid OP 100x more than Pandora shows how hugely the FM/AM business models have failed

Failed how? They have a business model that pays the artists a reasonable amount of money, while at the same time making a profit for the radio station.


OP is surprised because on conventional radio a single play can reach thousands of listeners earning you around a dollar. On Pandora, each play only reaches a single listener, so a million sounds like a lot.


As pointed out elsewhere, a "play" and a "play" here are wildly different. A radio "play" can involve several thousand people, while a Pandora "play" probably involves one or two persons.


I doubt it's even that - I used to use Last.fm for this, back when they offered that service, and I used it like... a radio! I.e., you leave it running as background music, and not necessarily bother turning it on/off everytime you leave the room or go shopping.


Oh, you and your pesky argument-undermining facts.


>I don't mean to sound contentious.. but, uh, why is OP surprised? Music access quickly becoming a commodity.

Because people want to be in control of social life and have their say and not just leave it to blind forces (from Gods, to Father Stalin, to the Free Market, to technology).

You say "music is becoming a commodity" in the way people once said "It was the will of gods for you to die in the ripe old age of 30".

No, music is NOT becoming a commodity. Business players, regulations and what have you are MAKING music a commodity.If people want to reverse course, they always can.




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