Sadly, Pandora Is Still Going Bankrupt

http://www.michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=298

by peter123 • 17 years ago

47 33 17 years ago

mr_eel3• 17 years ago

Well, that's what happens when you pin your business model on content you don't own.

It sucks, because labels and consequently artists will be missing out on the revenue and promotion that might come from wider web broadcasting.

riffic2• 17 years ago

traditional radio has been in business for decades, with a similar business model. they pay the record labels nothing.

mr_eel3• 17 years ago

Not true. Traditional radio stations do pay royalties.

rubinelli• 17 years ago

Good observation. I was listening to Chris Anderson's Free on the commute home, and an interesting case he mentions is how, back in the XIX century, radios created their own label, BMI, so they didn't have to pay royalties that would render their business model completely inviable.

I think that whoever succeeds in this area will do something very similar, working with indie artists from the very beginning, maybe even producing their albums.

decode• 17 years ago

Lawrence Lessig also talks about that case in this great TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strang...

jasonlbaptiste• 17 years ago

Let's get this logic straight: I promote your songs 1 billion times to people, and I'm willing to give you 25% of what I make. Yet, you want more to the point that I go out of business and you get 0% revenue and promote your songs 0 billion times.

They wonder why we pirate songs and they're losing money.

tptacek3• 17 years ago

Let me get this straight: you think the terms under which I'm willing to provide a service for are egregious, and I'm unwilling to negotiate, so you're simply going to take what you want.

Your critique of the industry would be more trenchant if it wasn't tipped with rationalization. Books are pretty expensive too. Authors --- publishers, even --- make virtually no money on most titles. And yet! They won't make them available for free download! Let's take the books, too!

Dobbs• 17 years ago

>They won't make them available for free download!

Yea they do check out the public library system.

Also if you like scifi check out Baen free library. There are also a few articles on the results of them giving away many of their books for free.

gruseom2• 17 years ago

The music industry can stand on "principle" (that's what they call their sclerotic conception of their own self-interest) all they want. It couldn't be clearer that reality is speaking otherwise. They seem to me like an angry guy standing on a rock, shaking his fist at the tide rising around him. Pretty soon they'll be washed away. It reminds me of what Martin Amis said to Salman Rushdie after the fatwa: "It could have happened to a nicer guy."

The spectacle of the music industry portraying itself as "good" and music fans as "evil" is a great comic irony of our time.

ubernostrum• 17 years ago

Well, cable TV used to be "piracy" when it rebroadcast over-the-air stations. Then they got a compulsory license written into law (17 USC 111). Doesn't seem to have destroyed the networks.

And, once upon a time, record labels paid radio stations to get songs on the air. That was outlawed, but it does show that what's considered "normal" now wasn't always, and might not be in the future.

sachinag• 17 years ago

If promotion isn't sufficiently less valuable than the pay-for product, then the promotion isn't actually promotion. It's just free shit. You can hate the labels and the RIAA all you want, but at every single step along the way, they've made rational economic decisions.

samson• 17 years ago

Yes, but what is rational can be dependent on the environment which you operate in, especially when dealing with economics which is not yet a science.

I'll give you an analogy of a research sample I got from a book.

Bee's by their nature or intelligence you may call it are trained to believe that light at the end of a tunnel is the escape. A rational and even sound analysis in nature. Now if you put a dozen bees in a glass bottle, and point the closed end towards the window where light is shining, all the bees instinctively fly towards that direction of the light and eventually die of exhaustion.

In the case of the bees what was rational in one environment was render completely useless in another.

fatdog7893• 17 years ago

You vastly overate the value of promotion. At some point, the owner would much rather have actual money in the pocket than "awareness", whatever that means.

After all, who cares if you get 100000000 views on YouTube if you never make a dime from it?

It's just like Hulu and the TV studios: they don't care if they lose out on the "promotion" of their product to the millions of viewers around the world by limiting viewership to the US, b/c they have no way to monetize foreign viewers.

req22• 17 years ago

Soulja Boy

pchristensen• 17 years ago

Pandora is charging $0.99 for premium accounts that let you listen to over 40 hours/month. That's $.025 per hour (less if you listen more). People pay $3 for a 10 second ring tone.

Charge more!!!!! People love and highly value your service. There are many, many people who would rather pay $5, $10, $20 or more per month to ensure that Pandora stays alive. How about limiting the number of songs you can listen to on the free iPhone client and selling a premium client for $9.99? They have 200K iPhone users.

I love Pandora, but they're not trying very hard to monetize.

Sadly, Pandora Is Still Going Bankrupt

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