
My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89 - uladzislau
http://thetrichordist.com/2013/06/24/my-song-got-played-on-pandora-1-million-times-and-all-i-got-was-16-89-less-than-what-i-make-from-a-single-t-shirt-sale/
======
cletus
Man I'm sick of hearing this particular complaint.

Let's look at the numbers. 1M plays for ~$42. Sounds like not much right?
Wrong.

Yes AM/RM Radio paid ~$1500 but for 20,000 plays. Now ask yourself this
question: how many people heard those 20,000 plays? If the rate of pay was the
same ($42/1M) it would have to be 35.7M listens. Well, at 20,000 radio plays
that averages 1800 people per listen. Is the likely audience higher or lower
than this number? It's bound to be higher. So streaming services are in fact
paying more (per listen per listener).

See [http://davidtouve.com/2011/12/13/uk-radio-versus-spotify-
a-c...](http://davidtouve.com/2011/12/13/uk-radio-versus-spotify-a-comparison-
of-the-value-of-spins-versus-streams/)

~~~
polemic
Wait what? $1,500 for 20,000 plays? If the average song is 4 minutes long[1]
that's 55 _days_ of continuous music. So, a radio station that played non-stop
music, 24/7 for a year is going to pay just under $10,000 _total_ in
royalties.. for a _year_.

That's pretty amazing, but I guess it's a matter of supply and demand: there's
an awful lot of music (and a lot of it is awful).

1\. [http://a-candle-in-the-dark.blogspot.co.nz/2010/02/song-
leng...](http://a-candle-in-the-dark.blogspot.co.nz/2010/02/song-length.html)

~~~
Anonymous238
Seems about right. I don't imagine your average radio station is generating a
fortune.

~~~
adventured
The margins vary wildly in radio. It's a sales driven business, once you meet
core costs it's 85% gravy after that (the only things that scale with your
sales are the music rights fees and commissions paid to sales persons). I've
seen mom & pop stations that can't get by, and I've seen modest small market
stations with 40% margins because they run a slim ship.

------
dvt
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...](http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/05/07/the-government-
is-now-subsidizing-rock-roll/)

~~~
windsurfer
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.

~~~
Drakim
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.

~~~
emn13
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.

------
paulsutter
Pandora and Spotify can do a lot more for bands by helping them plan tours,
sell tickets to shows, and connect with fans. They could also help venues book
and promote acts with known local followings.

There are hundreds of thousands of people who heard that song, like that type
of music, and would consider attending a show and spending real money to get
in. They might buy a tshirt too. Pandora could notify listeners when the shows
come up, and help bands plan their tours to towns with more fans.

It could be real revenue for the bands, and for Pandora.

EDIT: Doesn't even mean a UI change, could be done with ad retargeting, or any
performance marketing mechanism.

~~~
weisser
It's a real problem. There is no viable funnel through which to convert
Pandora streams into transactions except the "Buy" dropdown (which I'd guess
very few people click on - Pandora is often playing in the background in
another tab).

Daisy (Beats by Dre's "Spotify") is trying to do this by partnering with
Topspin and we shall see what happens - I'm excited to check it out.

The fact is, all-you-can-eat streaming platforms will never scale to the
amount where payouts for plays are significant if they continue with the
freemium model. Artists need the ability to sell other products and
experiences to those listeners. I'm, admittedly, biased towards the idea that
artists need to seek new direct-to-fan revenue streams.

Here's a piece I wrote on Hypebot about this:
[http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/01/music-subscription-
se...](http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/01/music-subscription-services-
introduce-you-to-fans-but-then-you-must-take-them-away.html)

~~~
TylerE
As a music fan, I would take anything associated with "Beats By Dre" as the
exact opposite of credible and useful.

~~~
weisser
I'd agree with you except the project is helmed by Ian Rogers whose
involvement is what makes it even remotely interesting to me.

[http://www.crunchbase.com/person/ian-
rogers](http://www.crunchbase.com/person/ian-rogers)

~~~
phaus
I know the headphones that Dr. Dre puts out are among the worst available on
the market. I've also heard that the mobile audio they provide affords a
barely noticeable difference.

~~~
weisser
Yep, hate to say it, but you and me are in the minority here. For the average
consumer, headphones are a social object. They want something that sounds
decent (remember they are playing lofi files from their phones) but looks
really cool (to them, and the people they are trying to appeal to, at least).
Also, vast numbers of people buy Apple earbuds even though they don't own
Apple devices!

That's all neither here nor there though, because Ian Rogers was never
involved with the headphones - he was CEO of Topspin and is now running the
development of the Beats music streaming platform.

I agree tying into the Beats by Dre brand is a negative for people like us,
but for the demographic they are going after it will probably be better than
building a brand from the ground up.

------
soupboy
For this to be a fair comparison shouldn't they compare the 1 million Pandora
streams to (18797 radio plays * number of listeners each time)?

~~~
jedc
Exactly. To really be fair you need to compare the audience for each play, and
for Pandora/Spotify it's just one person per play versus X (hundred/thousand)
for regular radio.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
Looks like the answer is probably "thousands" [1] of listeners per radio
station. The back-of-the-envelope is that the top station will have 1% of its
metro area listening at a time (metro areas as defined here [2]).

Even the 100th largest metro area would typically have 5k people listening to
a play of a track.

If you assume 5000 people listening per play at 18797 plays, and then
calculate a cost PER LISTENER (at $1373.78 royalties paid) you end up with
$0.014617 royalty per 1000 "performances" of the song (counting every
listener's radio as a "performance"). AND, when you multiply that back out
with the number of "performances" on Pandora, you get....$16.94.

Considering WAY more people probably heard the song on the radio, possibly by
a factor of 5 or more, this is a HIGH estimate; actually doing the math would
likely come out with a much lower equivalence, but it's the right order of
magnitude.

I am all about protecting artists rights to earn, and for buying music that
I'm listening to. As the parallel comment by smack_fu mentions, though, this
is _really_ about the insignificance of the Pandora market size more than
anything else. That and the inability of a particular blogging artist to do
enough basic math to realize the royalty per performance is _higher_ on
Pandora than it is on the radio.

[1] [http://www.radio-media.com/song-
album/articles/airplay66.htm...](http://www.radio-media.com/song-
album/articles/airplay66.html)

[2]
[http://www.arbitron.com/home/mm001050.asp](http://www.arbitron.com/home/mm001050.asp)

~~~
ronaldx
I have to respectfully question some of your assumptions:

Pandora has exactly one listener per track played?

1% of people listen to a popular radio station 24 hours a day?

~~~
shuzchen
If you follow the links he provides they have actual market data on how many
listeners any given radio station has, so his numbers have that behind it.
Also, it's not that 1% of people listen to a popular radio station 24 hours a
day, it's that at any given point in time, an average of 1% of the population
are tuned in to that station.

I'd say the Pandora 1 track per customer is a safe assumption. Sure, I've
known cafes and dinner parties where Pandora was streaming to multiple people
at once, but I've also known lots of friends who have Pandora playing on their
headphones even when their headphones aren't on their heads. Nobody I know who
uses Pandora actively pauses it every time they leave their computers, so I
expect it washes out in the end.

~~~
ronaldx
You can generalize my point: Pandora should be judged the same way as radio or
the comparison is unfair.

The methodology of arbitron says that if radio can be identified within audio
range, you are deemed to be 'listening' to it.

Can we still claim, by this methodology, that every Pandora device has an
average of one listener? Only if you claim every radio has an average of one
listener by this methodology as well (which is highly doubtful) or if radio
and Pandora are used significantly differently (which I don't strongly
believe: as you say, it's played in cafes in place of radio).

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
> if radio and Pandora are used significantly differently (which I don't
> strongly believe: as you say, it's played in cafes in place of radio).

I have to disagree: I think the vast majority of people listening to Pandora
are doing it on their laptop on headphones, while many radios (today) are not
being listened to by a single listener.

Regardless, the estimates I used intentionally underestimated the Arbitron
radio audience numbers by an order of magnitude. Some of the larger markets go
up to 150k listeners on the top station. If you're right and significantly
more than 1.0 people listen to a particular Pandora stream on average, then it
still have to be more than about 5-10 listeners per instance before it hits
the numbers that radio is claiming. And I would be very, very surprised if the
average were anywhere near that high. I think if Pandora had evidence of that,
they would be able to demand more money from advertisers, for one thing.

As to the methodology of Arbitron: Not really relevant for my purposes,
because I think that it's accepted by advertisers as reasonable. At some
point, if the numbers were complete garbage, the advertisers would have
noticed and stopped relying on them; advertisers certainly track the results
of their campaigns, after all.

------
ChuckMcM
Wow, that is so sad. One million plays is pretty crappy. Consider that there
are 70M active subscribers [1] that means 1 in 7 of them may have listened to
your song exactly once. And for the low price of $16.49 a million people have
heard your song, where as before nobody had heard it.

Now go look at your iTunes sales, how many copies of that song have you sold?
10? 100? 1000? How many of those sales occurred because people heard your song
on Pandora, who won't play specific songs on command, and so they wanted to
hear it again on their time?

Back in the bad old payola days you would have paid much more than that just
to have your song even _on_ the freakin' radio. Because that was the cost of
letting other people hear your music and come to the conclusion they wanted to
buy it.

[1] [http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/05/pandora-
reports-70m-a...](http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/05/pandora-
reports-70m-active-users-25m-paid-subscribers-revenue-up-55.html)

~~~
smackfu
>where as before nobody had heard it

Um, this is an established band. This song is from 1993. It was pretty big at
the time. That's why they still get thousands of dollars in radio revenue.
That's why they aren't very impressed by the "exposure" or the $15 in payout.

~~~
jonknee
The radio exposure is many many times more listens. They would be paid
similarly if they got anywhere close to the same amount of exposure on Pandora
(actually a lot more, Pandora pays a ton more than a radio station).

------
ryangripp
+SiriusXM plays "commercials" on channels where clearchannel has an interest
(KISS, etc.) Clear channel was an early investor in XM to insulate them from
the threat of satellite radio vs FM networks (which they own a large share of)

+Streaming networks like Pandora and Spotify actually pay more per stream then
SiriusXM does because satellite radio pays the Terrestrial (FM/AM) radio
rates.

+The Math on this is confusing because a Terrestrial (FM/AM) station might pay
$50 royalty to play a song but 200,000 people listened to it when it was
broadcast.

------
ngoel36
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.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
The author didn’t state that nobody buys his songs on iTunes. And just because
Apple pays artists well, is that a justification for Spotify to pay peanuts?
“I see you can pay your rent this month. Good, then you won’t be needing my
money!”

~~~
frossie
I think the point is that Pandora acts as a discovery app. It plays you
something and you think "hey I like it, I'll go buy it on iTunes".

Now I have no reason to believe I am representative (and in fact I would be
surprised if I was), but 60% of the music I have purchased in the last couple
of years has been as a follow-up to a Pandora play. Another 35% has been
following a Shazam tag from a radio station, and about 5% from a movie
soundtrack or something like that. Of those, Pandora is the only one that
causes me to buy albums instead of solely individual tracks, which is an order
of magnitude more money.

So I know for a fact that N artists got money from me that they would have
never gotten if not for Pandora. That doesn't help the (100-N) whose track
played and I didn't buy them; but, you know, I actually didn't care enough to
want to listen to them again. Or, Pandora played them while I had the computer
on mute (played is not the same as listened).

Now the legitimate question is, how many people are like me, as opposed to
people who use Pandora without buying anything at all as a result of what they
hear? I don't know the answer to that question and I suspect neither does
Pandora (they have a "buy" button so they can presumably track that, but I
only sometimes use it rather than just independently look for the artist on
iTunes some later time).

~~~
solnyshok
this reminded me of a guy who downloaded an audio book at piratebay, enjoyed
it and then searched for it on amazon, to see what other books people bought
with it. then downloaded those at shady sites too. but then, he usually
donates to authors of software that he uses (e.g. Libre Office). Maybe we need
an easier donation model for music. one that gives 99% of the money to the
author/perfotmer

~~~
Samuel_Michon
> an easier donation model for music. one that gives 99% of the money to the
> author/perfotmer

So it’s fine for record companies and distributors to get stiffed? Hosting,
payment processing, and marketing are not free.

~~~
nasmorn
Actually On pirate bay the hosting is payed for by hirls in my srea that would
like to mert me.

------
toomuchtodo
Music doesn't have the value it once did. End of story. Why are we dwelling on
this? There isn't going to be a magic way to increase the value of music.

~~~
brownbat
It's almost as if we have more people with more leisure time who can provide
more entertainment instantly to larger audiences with trivial costs.

Or maybe like we have the internet competing for our entertainment attention,
and it is just damn good sauce.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I would strongly agree with both.

------
dylangs1030
I don't mean to be heartless, but this makes sense to me.

By design, people aren't supposed to ean real revenue from their music on
Pandora. It's more about exposure, isn't it?

I mean, the supply and demand of it doesn't work out in the artists' favor,
only in Pandora's. No one can find _your_ song or _you_ specifically, so why
would you have an opportunity to earn a lot of money? There's no demand for
_you_ or _your_ work, just work in a certain genre that you might _fulfill_
for a few minutes.

Again, I don't mean to be harsh, but it seems like it makes sense in Pandora's
case. I think it would be more reasonable to expect some benefits to exposure
and fame than expect revenue. Users aren't exactly incentivized to click that
(admittedly tiny) buy button under the song.

------
roc
> _" Here’s an idea! Play two minutes of commercials and double your
> revenue!"_

If they could actually sell two minutes of commercials, I'm pretty sure they
would.

Expecting them to match the rates paid by massive existing media companies is
essentially wishing the startups who finally got traction in this niche, back
out of the picture and the entire market back to the business models and rate
of technological progress that those massive existing players deem
sufficiently non-threatening to their broadcast businesses.

I have sympathy for the author. I really do. But the problem ought not be
simplified down to "Pandora should pay what Sirius pays".

(Though it makes me wonder what rates the larger tech companies are paying,
now that they're making similar offerings.)

------
abtinf
Lets assume each AM/FM broadcast went out to 10,000 people. If we do the math,
we find that it is equal to the rate of $7 per million plays:

$1373.78 / (18797 * 10000) * 1000000 = $7.31

Now lets do the math for Pandora:

$ 16.89 / 1159000 * 1 000 000 = $14.57

So this writer is ACTUALLY COMPLAINING that Pandora merely pays DOUBLE the
royalty rate of terrestrial radio.

~~~
smackfu
You do realize you just made up that 10,000 number out of thin air?

~~~
abtinf
That's why I preface it with "lets assume" instead of "I know for a fact".
These are what we call "words" and they have "meaning".

~~~
smackfu
My point is that your conclusion that they pay DOUBLE the rate is entirely
based on this number that you give no justification for. If your comment
started with "Lets assume each AM/FM broadcast went out to 5,000 people," then
the rates would be roughly the same. So yeah, you can assume that number is
true, but what's the point.

~~~
emn13
In principle you have a point, but a quick google shows that his number is
entirely reasonable. I mean, I wouldn't read to much into the exact numbers
here, but the scale is definitely comparable.

------
sitharus
I've always viewed Pandora, Spotify and services like that as discovery
services. They let me hear the music before parting with a more money. If I
find an artist that I really like I'll buy their album or some merchandise.

Given the breadth of music I get from Pandora there's no way I'd be able to
afford every album of every artist I listen to on the off chance I might like
them.

Also you need to remember that a lot of people won't have the disposable
income to buy albums, tshirts or subscribe to satellite radio, so that money
from Pandora isn't going to be replaced.

Yes it's not much, but there's more to it than that number alone.

~~~
warfangle
Yup.

I stopped purchasing digital music goods (amazon mp3s, itunes downloads) a
while ago.

I subscribe to Spotify for music discovery, and resort to discogs.org to
purchase vinyl of music I want to keep, to own, to cherish on my Dual 1219.

I am not alone in this philosophy.

------
yardie
And yet I'm the idiot amongst my peers because I actually buy albums. God
forbid I do something as stupid as support my artists.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
If you want to support artists isn't there an argument for torrenting the
music and sending them all the money.

~~~
yardie
Would you work freelance on spec and only take money from clients if they were
unconditionally happy and at any price they wanted? That is the argument you
are asking artists to accept.

------
psgibbs
What this is missing is the amount of listeners each play counts for. On
Pandora/Spotify/Youtube, a 'play' is typically one listener. For these, it's
mainly worth noting that Spotify is about an order of magnitude more
profitable per play ($1e-4 vs $1e-5).

Sirius is at ~$1/play, commercial radio is $0.07/play.

For Sirius XM, the breakeven number of listeners/play for the pricing
structure to be comparable to Pandora is 70K. For Commercial Radio, the
breakeven number of listeners/play is 5,000.

*edit: added the price/play numbers

------
msg
FYI people, the author is David Lowery, lead singer/songwriter of Cracker. The
song is "Low".

I like the song and you probably did too, if you ever heard it. It was used in
_The Perks of Being a Wallflower_ last year.

It does strike me that many people may be under 20 and this song might
actually be older than they are. So I will assume the ignorance is genuine
rather than flippant.

[http://www.crackersoul.com/fr_home.cfm](http://www.crackersoul.com/fr_home.cfm)

~~~
DanielStraight
I'm over 20, and I've never heard of the author, group, song, or movie.

For another data point, I know plenty of people who had never heard of The
Princess Bride, Firefly or Monty Python before me telling them.

There is no level of popularity which ensures universal familiarity. You
should _always_ assume ignorance is genuine. See also:
[http://xkcd.com/1053/](http://xkcd.com/1053/)

~~~
Uchikoma
Agreed. I tell people: If my mom knows about it, it is probably famous. If
not, it's a niche audience ;-)

------
greenyoda
_" 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 bothers me. Why should the government regulate payments for music? Why
shouldn't a musician have the option of licensing his music to radio stations
but not to Pandora? We in the U.S. claim to have a system based on free
enterprise, but this is very far away from that.

~~~
warfangle
Because it's not just the performing artists that would need to give copyright
permission, it would also be all of the collaborating artists (lyricist, etc),
and the label, and potentially the mastering house. It would be a licensing
nightmare to get your song on the air - and would probably be harkened to the
bad old days of payola.

Read up on the history of copyright law, especially as it pertains to music.

~~~
greenyoda
But all of these entities would seem to have the common interest of maximizing
their revenues from royalties. So why shouldn't they have the right to
authorize one party (perhaps the label) to negotiate on their behalf?

Also, it's becoming increasingly easy for musicians to digitally produce their
own MP3s, so if there's no label or studio involved and the musicians wrote
their own lyrics, it would seem to be even easier for them to negotiate on
their own behalf.

------
jonknee
It's almost like he doesn't realize Pandora is paying him much much per
listener than radio is. So much so that Pandora loses money anytime someone
listens to a song. That's not enough though, run even more ads, pay even more
than the already higher fees.

~~~
anigbrowl
And yet people seem to think Pandora's business model is fine and it's the
artist's fault. could it be that Pandora's extremely limited number of
listeners-per-play means that it's not a very effective promotional tool?

------
weisser
The problem here isn't the low payout, it's the inability for bands like
Cracker to "opt out" of having their music on the service.

~~~
Falkon1313
Can the copyright owner opt out or claim infringement? (I looked it up, but
couldn't make heads or tails of the legalese.)

If the copyright owner could opt out, then it would sound like a matter of the
artist having sold their rights and not liking what the new owner's doing with
them. But it doesn't sound like that's the case, and that's what's confusing.

Seems hard to believe that the corporations that own most copyrights would
have created (or not prevented) a law that renders it worth less.

------
lifeformed
These numbers are weird, I had a completely different experience. I have
440,000 plays on Spotify of songs from my album, and I've made $2420 off of
that.

~~~
smackfu
Notice that the chart in the article shows that Spotify is paying 8x what
Pandora is. 116k plays for $12. And that this is 40% of the songwriting
payment only, since it's a member of a band.

------
aqme28
Shameless plug:

I've been working on [http://busker.fm](http://busker.fm). It aims to be the
fair way to stream music. We not only give artists 100% of album-sales, we
encourage album-sales by incorporating discovery, streaming, and the purchase
itself.

~~~
fuzzywalrus
Some helpful feedback: Right now the service looks pretty vanilla, but I want
to check out the music. There's already a barrier: a sign up wall.

Why am I going to to sign up? I don't see much motive to sign up when there's
so many services that I can browse without having to login (bandcamp,
soundcloud, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Last.fm, Pandora, Slacker Radio,
Songza... you get the idea).

Listeners should be put front and center as they are the main course, your
service should appeal to the consumer so they'll actually make the platform
viable for the musicians.

Right now I don't know what it is I'm signing for: be it a musician or
listener. It could be the greatest service ever but from the page, I cannot
tell. Give demos, show me something.

------
drcube
I have loved Cracker since I was a kid, and recently became a big fan of
Camper Van Beethoven. So I say this with utmost respect:

Why should David Lowery get paid now for work he did 20-30 years ago? Most of
us are lucky to get paid for work we did in the past month, and after that
we'll never get paid for that particular bit of work ever again. Imagine if I
still got paid, even just a few bucks a month, for all those burgers I flipped
back in the 90s? _Regular people have to keep working for their paychecks._

In that light it sounds a lot different to complain that work we did 20 years
ago doesn't provide the steady income we once thought it would. Times change,
and if you want to get paid don't rest on your laurels, keep making stuff
people want.

~~~
anigbrowl
_Imagine if I still got paid, even just a few bucks a month, for all those
burgers I flipped back in the 90s?_

You mean the burgers made to a recipe someone else came up with, in a kitchen
that they built for you? Trust me, a lot of musicians would be happy to just
turn up to work 50 hours a week with a guitar or whatever in return for steady
paycheck. But recorded music and radio killed off most of that market decades
ago. Musicians don't get paid for all the time they spend practicing and
working on writing tunes, they only get paid for sales.

Comparing writing a piece of music with flipping a burger is just astoundingly
ignorant.

------
abalone
It's not apples-to-apples. The Sirius XM and radio play counts are per
broadcast. Pandoras are per listener.

Let's look at Sirius. Sirius has ~20M subscribers. He got paid $181.94 for 179
broadcasts, or $1.02 each. Well, he's only making more per listen if it
reaches less than 0.3% of those subscribers (60K). Otherwise the Pandora model
actually pays him more.

Pandora: $16.89 / 1M listens = 0.0017 cents

Sirius XM: $1.02 per broadcast / 60K listens = 0.0017 cents

If you get more listeners on Sirius, that per-listen payout goes down. With
the Pandora model it scales proportionately.

He just has to keep in mind that Pandora is much smaller than radio right now
and that's why the absolute payout is small. It's confusing for musicians when
they see big numbers like One Million I guess. ;-)

------
robotcookies
Pandora apparently pays 12 cents per 100 plays. At that rate, they are paying
out $1200 for a song with a million plays. If the artist only gets about $16
(under 2%) out of that, where is the rest of that money going to?

~~~
emn13
Well, to the artist for one. He's not being payed as the artist. Before his
place in line you have the copyright owner, the lead performers, background
performers, and the other 60% of songwriters. Yes, that's right: he's
complaining just about the size of the 40% songwriter's cut.

------
mdm_
The most shocking revelation to me in this article is that Sirius XM plays 13
minutes of commercials per hour! I could have sworn one of their big selling
points was that they're commerical-free.

~~~
sliverstorm
How rude of you! They _are_ 100% commercial free- 78.3% of the time!

------
free652
So let's say XM radio have 3,000,000 listeners (24 mil total subscribers) So
179 x 3 millions = 537 millions and that's $181.94

Now Pandora played the song 1,159,000 and that's 16.89.

Wow... So Pandora actually PAYS A LOT MORE. It would have paid you 3 cents if
you use xm radio rates.

edit: well my numbers are off, since there are many channels on xm. XM pays
about the same as Pandora. I can't really get numbers how many listeners per a
XM channel.

But even if I take I reduce the listeners 100 times (30,000 listeners per
channel), still Pandora pays 5x times more.

------
kreek
I have no problem with Pandora's payout they are radio without direct access
to tunes. I have couple of tracks on Spotify, and although I wish they did pay
me more, I don't think they're too far off either. Spotify pay me about
$0.004/play.

I also have a premium Spotify account @ $9.99/month. Now I probably listen to
more music than most people, as I assume other premium subscribers do. Doing a
back of the napkin calculation I listen to an average of 30 songs per day, so
maybe 900 plays a month so you could say Spotify charge me $0.01/play. 40%
payout isn't bad, maybe it should be 50% or 75%, who knows what Spotify's
infrastructure costs them. Either way in the old days (> ten years ago)
artists were getting no where near 40%.

I've only bought two albums this year, Boards of Canada and Flying Lotus, they
were both not immediately on Spotify. This is probably the best course.
Release on MP3, CD, Vinyl, for the first couple of months for the hardcore
fans then release to the streamers.

The OP probably has his record label still taking a huge chunk of his payout.
Cut out the middle man, self publish. Streaming is only going to grow,
streaming profit will eventually go up.

Self-plug! @spotify
[http://open.spotify.com/album/2ASb9HnDamAwrsJQ9gKtqp](http://open.spotify.com/album/2ASb9HnDamAwrsJQ9gKtqp)
@soundcloud [https://soundcloud.com/kreek](https://soundcloud.com/kreek)

------
dllthomas
You want the government to butt out? Sure, let's get the government to butt
out: [http://questioncopyright.org](http://questioncopyright.org)

------
AwesomeDuck
I wish I could get paid for something I did 20 years ago. Maybe you should
consider that the purpose of copyright law was not to provide you and your
kids a revenue stream for life but rather to encourage free thought and
exchange of ideas by providing a limited period of protection before a work
became public domain. The original copyright term when congress passed the
first copyright law was 14 years. But greedy entertainment industry attorneys
have been able to pay off congress over the years and have the terms extended,
until now, thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, the expiration of
copyright is effectively gone. In fact nothing will enter the public domain
for decades now.

So maybe instead of complaining that the average Joe's of the world need to
listen to more commercials or pay you more for something you did 20 years ago
you could put that energy into something new. It amazes me that we can pay
teachers and law enforcement people $40,000 a year and hear about how high
taxes are, but then society sees no problem with someone making millions of
dollars off of an album...or throwing a football around for a dozen games a
year.

------
zachgersh
Pandora / Spotify are never going to be platforms that make musicians a living
(I am happy this article is representing that fact to the rest of the public).

Performing Live / Selling Merchandise and doing other physical appearances is
the only way you will ever make any money and even great artists who tour
still can't make enough money to keep producing their art (their following
just isn't big enough).

------
fredsanford
Let me start off by saying... I play the guitar and have played in bands that
did bars, parties and other affairs for money. _I_ have not written any songs
anyone would be willing to pay for, but, I have worked with folks that still
get royalties from things they did in the '60s and '70s.

One gentleman, who had what I'm now hearing is a garage rock hit was getting
~$1500 a month royalties in the '80s from a song I'd bet most of you never
heard.

What repulses me about Pandora and the like is that you cannot opt out. If
something is my work product, I should be able to price it as I see fit and
let the market decide if I'm an idiot or not.

Here's a youtube of my friends band from ~1965. Miss you Johnny...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPr4tmJBIVM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPr4tmJBIVM)

How many of you would be sick of this subject if it were basically robbing you
of the ability to make a living?

------
jared314
Is that the amount paid by Pandora, or the amount paid to the artist? I
thought there was a lot of middle men taking percentage cuts in between
Pandora and the artist.

[http://www.indieandunsigned.com/the-music-royalty-
breakdown/](http://www.indieandunsigned.com/the-music-royalty-breakdown/)

~~~
robotcookies
It's only the amount paid to the artist. Pandora actually pays 12 cents per
100 plays meaning they pay $1200 for a million plays. So the middle men are
apparently taking a huge cut. If I were a musician, I'd be more concerned
about that.

If Pandora doubled what they pay out, that musician would still only make
about $33. However, if that musician could get just 50% of what Pandora
already pays out, said musician would get $600.

------
aphelion
Dean Baker proposed "Artistic Freedom Vouchers" as a way to supplant
copyright. The basic idea is that every taxpayer would get a refundable tax
credit of 75-100 dollars which could be "spent" by buying creative works from
anyone who registered to be a recipient. It would be a very low bar to clear,
just enough to weed out the obvious scams. Anyone who received AFV money would
be barred from placing their works under copyright for the next five years.

It the context of our current IP law paradigm, I will admit it seems radical.
Given how wasteful and repressive our current IP laws are, that seems like it
would be a good thing.

------
badclient
Does _played_ mean someone listened to it in entirety? Otherwise it doesn't
say much about the quality of your song. That is similar to claiming you have
a million users without talking about engagement.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
The song in question is Low, by Cracker. A song that placed 64 on the
Billboard Hot 100. It was also on the soundtracks of movies like The Perks of
Being a Wallflower.

When you hear it, you probably recognize it:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYdlqjiQPAc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYdlqjiQPAc)

------
IzzyMurad
I don't get it. Many of you are saying "Pandora pays a ton more than a radio
station".

The song was played 1 millon times and he got $16.89.

How many times the song should be played to make a significant amount then? A
billion times?

~~~
thedufer
On radio, he got ~$1400 for ~19000 plays. But how many people heard those?
Estimates for average listeners pretty much all fall between 1000 and 10000,
which gives you .68 - 6.8 cents per 1000 listens, whereas on Pandora he got
1.5 cents per 1000 listens.

The point is that he's reaching almost no one on Pandora, compared to the
number of people he's reaching by radio. Of course they're paying him less.

~~~
IzzyMurad
I see. So both are paying next to nothing in comparison to the number of
plays.

------
brownbat
The returns to your chosen profession will have some relationship with how
many other people want to offer that service. Some people break their backs
picking up smelly trash on hot summer days, don't have high school diplomas,
but manage to get by. Some people bust their ass learning arcane branches of
engineering or medicine and can do pretty well.

You chose to spend a life making music. I love music so much I'd almost do
that for gas money and staying on people's couches. Almost. I know a lot of
guys who would and do.

So I'm sorry you're not rich. But not that sorry.

------
emn13
If you do the math, this just doesn't sounds that crazy. A streamed song on a
radio just isn't worth that much, and there are many, many fingers in the pie
here. Especially since he gets just 40% of the rights involved, and that's not
the rights for the song ownership: this is just the cut for the songwriter -
not the for the performers or the song owners.

I'm assuming he's getting the normal SoundExchange deal, but it's not 100%
clear.

Sure, it's not very much, but what exactly was he expecting?

------
marze
Say you buy a song on a CD or online. Spend $1 or so. Listen 5 times, that is
$0.20 per. Listen 50 times, it is $0.02 per play.

Pandora pay $0.000017 per play, and is lobbying to pay less. Given how much
less the current fee is compared to buying a track, if anything, I'd be in
favor of an increase. Why shouldn't musicians make a bit more money for their
effort, something more in line with purchased music?

------
wheaties
Quick question, how much did your label take as a cut?

~~~
Samuel_Michon
It’s Virgin Records, so quick guess: a lot.

------
toddh
An interesting comparison is if Google makes 35 cents a click
([http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2220372/How-Google-
Rake...](http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2220372/How-Google-Rakes-In-
Over-100-Million-in-Search-Advertising-Daily-Infographic)) then they would
make $350K from the same million "impressions."

~~~
driverdan
That doesn't make any sense. You're attempting to compare two completely
different things.

~~~
anigbrowl
That's funny, considering people are saying that Pandora and radio are exactly
the same.

------
logn
No one forced the OP to submit his music to Pandora. You have to specifically
sign up to a label or pay someone like TuneCore.

And software developers face the similar difficulties to musicians making
money on their own, hence why we work for the Silicon Valley giants he's
bashing.

Also, the OP is 'Cracker'. They're signed to a subsidiary of EMI. I wonder how
much money his label took.

------
nitrogen
I have to wonder if Pandora ever manipulates play counts. Mumford and Sons was
one of Pandora's top paid artists. Though I like their music, could it be that
they were being pushed into stations that were completely unrelated? Like my
Dubstep station playing Little Lion Man repeatedly, even though it's not even
close to the same genre?

------
imchillyb
Music, cinema, and television, used to be considered performance arts. One
performance, one payment.

If I build a piece of furniture, or any other physical item, what right to
royalties do I have? None.

The greed of the music, movie, and television industries knows no bounds. I
for one am sick unto death of their greed mongering.

------
clarky07
If you don't like how much money Pandora pays you, stop letting them play your
songs. As noted elsewhere in this thread, their rates per listen are very
similar to traditional radio. When played on the radio, thousands hear it.
When played on Pandora, 1 person hears it.

------
lakethun
Be aware that this blog post only tells part of the story. See the discussion
and linked blog post a couple days later.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5947584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5947584)

------
confusedsquirel
I have seen posts like this from time to time. My question is this; Is this
what the record company pays you or the service?

My guess is that this is the cut after the record company gets theirs.

------
lucisferre
Reminds me of the SouthPark "Internet Money" episode.

------
tehwebguy
Comparing it to radio is interesting, but it seems like YouTube would be the
best option. Even a super low $1.00 CPM 1m plays would make you $1,000.00

------
gesman
We all can set the record straight: download the album and donate directly to
the artist to support great talent. Say "no" to middleman.

------
loceng
Is there a way to know how that increased sales of the song, assuming there
was an easy and immediate way for listeners to do so?

~~~
danman01
would be interesting to compare pre-pandora days (prior to, say, amassing 100k
plays for 'Low' in a quarter) to the current revenue generated for Cracker as
a whole. I'm pretty sure pre streaming music days will win by a long shot.
"How will musicians support all these tech startups?!" That's the question.

------
wnevets
If your song was worth more (aka you were paid more per listen) you probably
wouldn't of never made it to a million listens

------
jccalhoun
So he's complaining about still getting paid for a song he released 20 years
ago? Damn. Wish I had problems like that...

------
robbiemitchell
If you make something and rely on others to sell it, then they do a bad job,
you _also_ lack a business model.

------
kirillzubovsky
The real question is, would anyone care to listen to your songs at all, if it
wasn't for Pandora?

~~~
smackfu
How is that the real question? The post says the same song had 18,000 radio
plays in the same time period.

I mean, it's a pretty recognizable song, just a bit old:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYdlqjiQPAc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYdlqjiQPAc)

~~~
corin_
If you re-word it slightly to " _How many of the people who listened to it
through Pandora would_ (care to listen to your songs at all, if it wasn't for
Pandora)" then it's more relevant, though not "the real question" to me.
Though still kinda rudely worded.

------
autarch
I'm outraged that people get paid at all for this sort of thing. Why should an
artist be paid repeatedly for doing one piece of work? That's madness. Artists
should be paid to _create_ art. Once it's done, why you should get paid over
and over?

~~~
anigbrowl
_Artists should be paid to create art._

That would be create. Unfortunately, artists actually get paid based on sales,
not creativity.

------
codeulike
Too must music. Supply and demand. Musicians need to get together and sort out
some quotas so that they stop flooding the market with music.

 _not actually sure if I 'm joking or not, need to think about this more_

------
ctdonath
Um...music (information) wants to be free?

Why sign up for a system which provides almost no return?

ETA: Sorry, the first line was a "couldn't resist", presented (badly) as just
raising another popular meme and invoking discussion of the conflict thereof.

The second line refers to the fact that somewhere he signed a release whereby
(however obtuse, obfuscated, and nigh unto unavoidable) such financial abuse
was consented to. In comparison, consider how schools are offering near-free
degrees (real ones, like MIT) in retaliation to exorbitant student debt, and
doctors & patients are opting out of the hideous costs of government-run
healthcare by returning to cash & subscriptions (I don't mean to provoke
arguments over those, just as points of comparison). Somewhere, somehow,
alternatives exist where real payment is demanded and he actually would get
paid (and no I don't mean "make money performing", as some music just isn't
per se).

~~~
owenjones
I believe music is more than "information", when I buy an album, I'm not
buying the sheet music but the recorded of someone more talented than myself
performing that music.

How do you apply "information wants to be free" to music like this?

~~~
pessimizer
Being written down is not what makes something information, so I'm not sure
why sheet music would be any more information than recorded music.

~~~
owenjones
I'm saying that a recording of a band performing a song IS more than
information, there's the added value of someone performing that deserves
compensation.

~~~
pessimizer
What does deserving compensation have to do with whether it's information or
not? People who provide information often ask for compensation.

You're arguing for the existence of a soul.

~~~
owenjones
Nothing and I never claimed that it does? I disagree with the whole
"information wants to be free" rhetoric in regards to music in this specific
context.

Yes an MP3 is literally and pedantically information, however it also has an
additional worth to me that I find rewarding to pay for. I believe people who
enjoy music but use this argument to acquire it for free are deluding
themselves.

