Comments on: Music Industry Opens Pandora’s Box on Copyright Debate

By: Mike A.

Mike A. — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:13:31 +0000

yea Pandora’s very fxxking amazing. It’s more than a simple streaming site.

By: Solomon Kleinsmith

Solomon Kleinsmith — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:53:05 +0000

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.

By: kranky kritter

kranky kritter — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:44:08 +0000

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.

By: Agnostick

Agnostick — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:49:20 +0000

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