Music Industry Opens Pandora’s Box on Copyright Debate
By Solomon Kleinsmith | Related entries in NewsI haven’t been a big audiophile for a long time, but I will tell you, I love the services that ad supported streaming radio makes available to the listening public. I was in college during the heyday of Napster, and literally had a playlist that lasted four days long that I kept on a continual loop, while also sharing those MP3s with tens of millions of other Napster users worldwide. As the years have passed though, I have both come to care less about what specific music I’m listening to, as well as come to understand the position of copyright holders. A musician has every right to be compensated for his or her work, if many people are listening to it, as well as the music industry that promotes and distributes it.
This is why I was overjoyed to hear about the recent agreement between Pandora and the music industry, lowering the webcasting rates to a level that is reasonable enough for online radio to thrive and be profitable. The music industry’s response to new technology has been just plain terrible over the years. They brought some wicked PR on their heads by suing college kids for tens of thousands of dollars, as well as dead people, 6 year olds and even a dog. They have only recently begun to understand that most people are fine with paying for their music, either through fees or advertising while they listen, but online users just want easy avenues of getting to that music.
In full disclosure, I’m listening to a Pandora ’station’ based on Romantic Era Classical works as I write this(through my trusty old Bose headphones). So far I have heard a handful of amazing pieces, by Franz Schubert, Beethoven and Jean Sebilius, mixed in with the occasional piece I am just so-so about. As I listen I can tell Pandora if I like it or not, and it supposedly will learn my tasted better over time. This seems to be working, as the longer I listen to this personalised channel, the less often I hear a song I don’t like.
Like most other online listeners, I’m fine with ‘paying’ for my music, in this case through advertising. These services have been luring more and more people from the peer to peer file pirating services, and adding a much needed income stream to the struggling music industry that is seeing CD sales plummet, and track sales from sites like iTunes not perform as well as they were hoping.
The most recent twist in this story puts the music industry on the same side with their old adversary. Pandora claims that the rules that require that they pay a fee per song be equally applied to all such services, including radio stations. Radio interests claim that they shouldn’t have to pay because they drive interest towards artists and labels, but if that is true, then why should Pandora, a service with millions of listeners, have to pay? This is a reasonable question for them to be asking I think.
So what do you think? Should all music broadcasting services pay this fee, or is there some fundamental difference between online radio and FM/AM that makes it so one deserves to get a free ride?
This entry was posted on Monday, July 20th, 2009 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 20th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
I don’t listen to a lot of internet radio–but I have listened to some in the past. When you say “internet radio,” Solomon, I’m going to assume that you’re talking about a webcaster that puts out a data stream that is only available online… as opposed to the local AM terrestrial “scream porn” broadcaster that just duplicates, online, their on-air signal.
Like I said, I don’t know how it is today… but the last time I recall listening to something like this was one of the VH-1 online stations. Sound quality issues aside, I did enjoy the fact that the music or programming stream wasn’t interrupted nearly as much as with terrestrial commercial radio.
What kind of ads will a user be exposed to by a webcaster? Banner ads that appear on the media player, but don’t interrupt the music? Traditional audio ads? Video ads?
With banner ads, popups or any other “silent” advertising, it’s pretty easy to fire up the music, minimize the player, and you have a pretty much advertising-free experience.
I’m just rambling here, but the bottom line is, what kind of advertising is involved in webcasting? How “captive” is that audience? When you’re in the car, and the music stops and the commercials start, you can sometimes punch a button and click over to another station for a few minutes. How does that compare with webcasting?
The degree to which ad revenue can sustain webcasters, will greatly impact the need for subscription fees.
Agnostick
agnostick@excite.com
July 20th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
I think most folks don’t care, and flow to whatever’s free. Like them, I am happy to leave the squabbling over who gets what slice of the shrinking pie to the various enterprises involved.
Personally, I am very sympathetic to the notion that creators deserve to profit from their creations. How much profit? Well that’s being constantly renegotiated by copying and sharing technology, isn’t it?
I’d be even more sympathetic to copyright protection if copyrights didn’t last so GD long, 75 or 100 years or more. Which is just silly when patents only last 17 years… .
One thing I can’t help but notice is that when musical entertainment revenue goes down, that shrinks the profit motive for musicians. As an amateur musician, I am not convinced that this is necessarily THAT bad a thing. Arguably, decreasing the profit motive clears the way for those driven by their art as opposed to celebrity and profit.
Here’s the thing,: at least within the domain of popular music, musical performers that are the most successful of the modern era seem to me to be, by and large, dreadful.
July 21st, 2009 at 12:53 am
I haven’t used other streaming services recently, but some services I did use had interruption style advertising just like radio, but you could change the channel as there are tens of thousands of them across the web. Pandora’s ads are all banner style. They never interrupt the flow of music. That isn’t the reason I use Pandora almost exclusively, but its a perk.
July 21st, 2009 at 6:13 am
yea Pandora’s very fxxking amazing. It’s more than a simple streaming site.