

Pandora Suit May Upend Century-Old Royalty Plan - digital55
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/business/media/pandora-suit-may-upend-century-old-royalty-plan.html

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steve19
What I don't understand is why the music companies license their entire
catalogs to the likes of Spotify and Google All Access, which is a direct
replacement for buying music, but want to drive true Internet Radio like
Pandora and indie stations out of business. It makes no sense.

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fourstar
I went to a talk at Pandora couple weeks ago and Tim Westergren said that 90%
of Americans still use (traditional) radio every week. I doubt music companies
are trying to get the indie stations to go out of business -- they go out of
business because they don't play the hits (thus it's harder to gain a huge
user base + monetize).

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rblatz
CD101 (CD1025) in Columbus is as indie as they come. Independently owned and
operated, playing indie and alt rock. They are doing awesome and are a true
jewel for the city. If indie radio can make it in Ohio why are so many other
stations having so much trouble?

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fourstar
I'm not saying correlation == causation, however, there are something like 55k
college students who are probably more of the target demographic for that
particular genre making up a big portion of the listening audience.

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ars
> record companies ... only ... to publishers

Aren't those two the same thing?

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adventured
Often, but not always.

A record company can be just the label the music is marketed under. Or it can
be both the label and the publisher of the music (with the publisher typically
holding the copyrights).

For example, in 1995 Jay-Z created Roc-A-Fella Records as his label, and then
Priority handled distribution for him (and later Def Jam).

Sometimes large stars will own a record company that holds their music rights,
while having someone like Warner for distribution purposes.

