But, it's their choice.

I can only hope that the constant battles they are having with the people that want to listen to music from artists (which doesn't have to involve the record industry) will be resolved for the benefit of artists and music lovers. If the music industry dies because of that .. ho hum.

* music industry is only a few major conglomerates really, isn't it?

This service has been 100% awesome the entire time I've used it, and have had many friends be grateful that I introduced them to Pandora.

I subscribed to Sirius for several years, and just recently canceled my service because of the Pandora iPhone app...and because Pandora's personalized stations are simply unbeatable.

What can we, as a listener base 1 million strong, do to help Tim?

there is jamendo, we7, magnatunes. lots more...and pandora is already US only, so for us asians, they've pulled the plug years back.

This is about Control. They screwed it up 10 years ago when we drug their asses kicking and screaming into the Internet. Now every time someone invents something to bring the music to the masses the major labels start crying foul because they lose control of something that they had on lock. Now that distribution has been yanked out of their bratty selfish hands they want to start making small internet radio stations pay extortionist fees at the hands of the FCC ruling instead of a percentage of profits. Did somebody ask the RIAA what happened to all that money they've collected from Napster and the customers they've sued? If I was them I'd hire a PR firm and have press conference as I started handing out checks to the artists I was supposedly representing. There is nothing wrong with the state of the music industry except the majors want their distribution back. Your time of control is up. Keep trying to sell us your 8-track methods in a digital world.

If cutting out the middle man (aka recording industry) was such a great idea, then someone like Pandora should have been making it work - instead, whether it's Pandora, Torrent trackers , YouTube, et al - it always seems that 'professionally' produced content is more popular option, which is something we should be paying attention to.

(You could actually learn this by looking at the history of the music industry - I own a lot of small label/self-released material but largely speaking it isn't popular).

What will I do - listen to my music collection, streaming previews on mySpace or Boomkat, music blogs - there's not exactly a shortage of ways to discover music.

What there is is a shortage of people with business models that don't involve people producing content for free while they cream an advertising percentage on the side.

@MKR, terrestrial radio has a much wider reach than internet radio and the artists get exposure. Internet radio does not have that reach, not until wifi is everywhere and wifi capable devices are as cheap conventional fm receivers, would it have that reach. So in terms of the non-monetary economics, free internet radio basically a loss-loss situation of artists and recording companies, remember they make music to make money not because they just love it.

The answer is simple:SLACKER.COM.

Check it out. You will be pleasantly surprised.

The combination of a service like pandora and legal download services such as itunes and emusic provides a compelling alternative to peer-to peer file sharing services by allowing you a free, legal way to listen and fully preview music before you buy it.

There are millions of people like myself, who respect the artists and copywrite laws. This record industry has taken another step towrds alienating customers like myself.

Mainly they are making show that they won't get any favors just because they are on the World Wide Web, rather they should be censored and driven under by the World's Narrow Viewpoint.

like the other guys said, check it out.

@zero-kill: Either you don't know what open source is, or you don't know much about Pandora. It is anything BUT open source.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503367.html?referrer=digg

Are they emailing their users?

Are they coordinating with other web radio services a political campaign?

They have all these users and rather than mobilize them Pandora is doing nothing with this leverage.

If Pandora closes they deserve to close because they are not doing Basic Grassroots Organizing 101.

To think it'd dissapear completely is horrible :/

Sad... if they pull the plug!!!

A portion of all Soundexchange payments go directly to the artists. You should research Soundexchange before you knee jerk on it.

This is a complicated issue. I really like Pandora a lot. But I also like to see artists, small label owners, etc., get compensated fairly. The rates put in place by the copyright tribunal are not outrageous. They are only outrageous is you are an internet music company that is accustomed to basically paying nothing for the content you deliver.

This is a false economy and needs to be rebalanced. There is no way that Pandora will shut down. It's too popular. If they can't make a go of it as a stand-alone company, someone will acquire them. Perhaps they'll have to air commercials in between songs, or something like that. I wouldn't be bothered by that personally. The actual music being played would still be superior to what is on terrestrial commercial radio.

My beef with regular radio isn't the commercials. It's the shite music that most of these stations play. I suspect that there are plenty of other people who feel the same way. There are also other people who would probably be willing to pay a subscription fee to not have to listen to commercials. Good for them.

This shut-down threat is mostly rhetoric to try and get the government to intervene on behalf of these large web-casting companies and undo a great deal of research and fact-finding by the copyright tribunal. This was a long and very thorough-going process. The large internet music companies didn't get the result they wanted, so now they are trying to short circuit the process in Congress.

I am not an apologist for the RIAA. But I do work with lots of artists, and I think that in the long run we will be better off if there is a system in place that compensates them fairly for their work. As things stand, ASCAP and BMI payments are some of the only steady money that songwriters see from exploitation of their work. Soundexchange is a means by which the people who played on the sound recordings of the songs can also receive some compensation for their labors.

Music is not free. People spent time and money making it. They should have a chance to get something back directly when it is used. It's just not enough to say that, "oh they'll make it up playing live and selling t-shirts," especially when gas is over $4.00 a gallon in the US now.

Soundexchange has compromised on small-webcaster royalty rates, which are significantly lower than those of the larger players. So this really is about large corporate webcasters who don't want to pay fair value for the music they stream.

I know nobody wants to have to pay for anything, and I'm that way myself, especially when I haven't thought through the whole picture.

But before you just knee-jerk and say Soundexchange=RIAA, do a little research and learn about the issues.

The lack of a performance right in sound recordings under the US Copyright law isn't some sort of inherently logical policy choice that should never be undone. It's the result of decades of successful lobbying by the broadcast industry going back to probably the 1930s. These sort of threats to shut down are a part of that lobbying effort.

So before buying that stuff hook, line, and sinker, at least take the time to research the whole issue.

On that note, if anybody is willing to set up a method to donate to this cause (via paypal, or some other method) I would gladly contribute my share. With $5 from all the real devoted listeners, it could make up at least the amount they are getting hit with. If they are gonna get slapped with heavy fees for listening (and I agree this seems like "giving in" to the RIAA), they need some revenue to offset it.

We used to have this avenue via traditional radio. Years ago, any new song or artist was introduced on the radio, and listeners could call and request to hear the song again and again, and that would be a gauge of the musicians popularity.

I don't know about you, but when I spin the dial and land on a radio station and find a station whose main product is to deliver music, it's either in the middle of a long stream of uninteresting and annoying commercials, or the endless battalion of radio stations are playing Classic rock, soft rock, or Top 40 that never seems to change.
It's a Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, repetitive cycle.

Cookie cutter country, or rap /hip-hop are not a genres I'm interested in, but I would think that listeners of those types are stuck in the same loop when they tune in.

How many times over the years can the same song be played over and over and over again? I graduated from high school in 1976, and the stuff I heard back then is STILL in regular rotation!

Radio stations are blaming iTunes, and other portable players as a reason that they are loosing listeners. when the real problem at hand is that a real music lover lovers hearing new and exiting music from sources that are filling the empty void that is now over the airways.

The Internet become the transport mechanism for new music, and the various social networks have replaced the face to face word of mouth that happened when broadcast radio was at it's prime.
Pandora , last.FM, and all of the others have found what traditional radio has lost, yet the labels, are blind to that. They're still trying to sell the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and the Stones and the ilk from that day, when everyone has heard it all before.

When it all comes down to it they are only cutting their own throats. There is only so much people will pay for music. After that more people will turn to piracy to get music and if those sources are not available then they will just eventually stop listening to that music and find alternatives. Like say local bands / artists. Or maybey independent artists. Anything really.

Greed is an ugly ugly thing!

But the record industry wants us to pay every time we listen to our music on devices controlled by the only record company they work with, and they probably also want to charge royalties for each time someone speaks the name of or hums a few lines from a song.

If anyone knows of a way to donate to Pandora or become a paying customer, please let us know.

Lords of Acid, M.I.A., The Noisettes, Genitortures, Wednesday 13, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, [ERROR], Skillz, Horrorpops, Brett Dennen, Talib Kweli, Peaches, Lee Feldman, and MANY MORE need to have their record companies thank pandora for giving me a sample of their work, which resulted in me buying CDs of theirs. Lords of Acid and Genitortures Really need to get their thank-on, because i have almost all their CDs now.

Not trying to sound too bitter, but it's far from the only great streaming service out there.

Recording artists have to trust themselves and their audiences. If artists will stop assigning their rights to these agencies then there will exist a large pool of music that can be played by webcasters, podcasters et al - all outside the legal reach of any controlling forces.

Of course, many artists and/or their management do not believe that audiences will support them - by buying downloads, buying CDs, buying concert tickets etc. - if they make their music available without promise of performance royalties.

It's a new age. Time for artists en masse to join the revolution.

I understand that the RIAA has a legal right to charge royalty fees for the use of their music. However, I find it a little absurd that they can charge more than the company is actually making from it. To me, this suggests that the RIAA is overcharging for their product. It also suggests that the RIAA is not truly interested in recouping costs, but, rather, controlling the use of their material.

To be completely honest, I have a fundamental issue with the RIAA. They are making a lot of money from the talent and work of artists solely because they control the distribution medium of recorded music. IMHO, most music on top 40 radio is only there because the RIAA wants it there. They decide what will be popular; they determine the demand for their supply; they are essentially anti free-market economy. One can argue that the RIAA's real product is distribution, over which they have a monopoly. Thus, their actions against Pandora could be considered restrictive to free trade for their product, which is essentially illegal.

Maybe these ideas are a little crackpot, but I think there is some validity here. I guess its back to the used record stores where I can preview albums before purchasing them for 5 bucks.

"They should have a chance to get something back directly when it is used."

Exactly, which is why the labels should get out of the way, and let artists and listeners have a real relationship. It's next to impossible to make a sustainable living as a musician in the US anymore because of them - it's either you're rich or you're struggling, and it's been that way for a long time. Services like Pandora do far more to cultivate that relationship than the completely a**hat corporations that seem to be more willing to burn the village to save it than to figure out a workable situation for all, which given their nature, is hardly a surprise.

BTW, I'm saying this as a gigging performer, so don't tell me I don't know the music business - believe me, I do, and far too well.

Way to go, major conglomerations. You've showed once again that you are totally clueless. Seriously, it'll almost be worth having Pandora shut down just to see you go down in a blaze of glory.

Almost...

I agree with a commenter above, support indie artists.

Other competing music services thriving under this new fee structure are primarily funded by the music industry. There was concern that when the fee hikes went into affect it was just a means of the recording industry and it's partners to drive out competitors.

To say that Pandora is failing because it doesn't have the reach of over the air radio stations is idiotic. There are plenty of over the air stations out there in smaller markets that have significantly fewer listeners than Pandora and the recording industry seems to cut them the same deal as everyone else + a little payola here and there. To me this is just plain jane RIAA greed and dirty tactics to cut out the competition.

I also use Pandora to find some of the best Jazz musicians around. In a time where less than 2% of the US Population listens to Jazz music, Pandora was a haven of good music. I went from only knowing Louis Armstrong and Dixie Land, to hearing Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Art Blakey, and countless other musicians. For me as a saxophone player, I dug finding new Bari Sax players who hardly got radio play: From Mulligan to Serge Chaloff, Nick Brignola, and Pepper Adams.

If Pandora shuts down, the "music industry" will have just lost great advertising to more than 1,000,000 users.

This may seem strange but, I have never once bought an album w/o first consulting Pandora.

It passed sometime last year and since then, sites that haven't managed to get some sort of special deal are going out of business.

Basically, it ensures that no new players will be entering the market and established online radio stations will slowly go out of business as their 'special deals' expire.

Anyone who is not a giant (like, say, Yahoo) or directly affiliated with the companies behind the RIAA will not be running an online radio station in the long run.

The current rate is $0.0014 per song per listener. That means that each listener you have will cost you around 1.5 cents per hour listened (assuming 10 songs/hour). That doesn't seem like much until you realize that you can't get advertisers to pay that much per listener -- the market simply isn't there yet. Keep in mind that that's just the performance fees; ASCAP/BMI and streaming bandwidth at least double that, and then you have to pay for any other costs you have (i.e. the salaries of your employees). And next year the rate goes up to $0.0018.

For those that wonder why over-the-air broadcasters don't have to pay the performance fee, you just have to ask yourself: if you were an artist trying to sell CD's, what would you pay to have a radio station play your songs? Based on the payola scandals in years past, the answer is "lots". Hence, radio stations were given an exemption from paying the performance fee because they were viewed as already providing an important promotional role for artists (though they were banned from accepting payola). It seems to have worked very well, too: the record labels built their empires largely thanks to people hearing music over the radio.

Also, it's not like Pandora was ever trying to screw over the artists, or built their business model around not paying a performance fee. There have been performance fees for online streaming for years, but they were never this high. Pandora planned on having fees, it just didn't plan on those fees skyrocketing.

There's lots of great CC music available, and, by raising its profile more artists could become aware, and not keep choosing to be pawns in the tired old industry game.

Right now artists who register with Sound Exchange and others to administer their songs are part of what is keeping independent internet radio down.

Think of Pandora on the iPhone as the same thing as HD radios that use Sync technology. "Hey this song sure is good" *click* "hey look i'm buying it on iTunes!"

\/\/

A few services are doing ok with ads. Not sure how last.fm is really making money versus being a loss leader for the experimenting CBS (and I don't see any ads on the site now).

Live365 is quietly doing ok (not great, but surviving) having a mix of advertising, sponsorship, and VIP memberships (which is actually a cool service that you can use on Windows Mobile as well) -- folk might want to go back and look there as well. They have stated that something like 45% of their listening is indie artists (which hasn't made the labels too happy with working with them either).

I'll level with you, I pirate music. Why? Because so much of it is bad, and it's so hard to be exposed to new music.

The radio sucks, so many ads, and without Pandora and it's like, I will have no real exposure to new music.

So I will retreat to my collection of a few hundred albums, and I won't miss wading through tons of garbage just to find the shimmering nugget of listenable new music.

Congrats music industry, you're winning the battle. Any idea what you're doing to the war?

Steve

The point is, everyone is out to make money, and at the end of the day, it all boils down down to politics. Pandora may have been out to make money, but they provide a service that is very cool, well thought, useful, and at their time of inception, unique. It took money to make, money to run, and money to grow; I just don't see why there can't be some compromise allowing Pandora to pay their dues, but not be burdoned so bad that they are forced out of business. I know there has GOT to be a loophole somwhere. I'm just not smart enough to figure it out.

Unfortuinately there are't any political parties these days; it's either BIG Govornment or BIG Business. What I hope we can do as responsible 'Forum Readers/Writers' is to help spread the knowledge of legitimate contact information an both sides of this issue in order to support or disprove of these actions. I don't think a petition does much these days, but I could be wrong.

Here is Rep. Berman's link:
http://www.house.gov/berman/

More specifically, check out what he has to say about several topics under "Intellectual Property".

I read a recent article on the ever-growing threat of you folks having to shut down if the music industry has its way with their ongoing encroachment into the internet’s free-radio sites. And I have to say that my stomach is turning. The Article I read was here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/pandora_on_the_verge_of_closing_shop.php#64060

I have loved your service since the first day I’d heard of it, and Pandora has become part of my daily life. I send my playlists out to friends all over the world and can’t tell you how many times I’ve bought an album because I’d heard it and liked it on Pandora.

I, along with thousands of others, want to know what we can do to help. Someone suggested donating money (much the way Public Radio and NPR do), or having telethon (webethon?) Please, many of us are sincere, and many, like myself, are just learning of this news and wanting to keep your service alive.

Most Sincerely and With Great Hope

Shawn

************************* Pandora Email Addy's **********************************
pandora-info@pandora.com; pandora-privacy@pandora.com; pandora-ads@pandora.com; pandora-press@pandora.com; pandora-bizdev@pandora.com; suggest-music@pandora.com; pandora-support@pandora.com

How is it that the Copyright Office forces Pandora to pay SoundExchange - against the wishes of those artists?

Surely there must be a way to enable those artists who want their music to be made freely available on Pandora and other services, to do that. And, for those artists who want to paid for each digital play etc. - those people should, of course, get what they want.

Whatever happened to freedom of choice in matters? The music industry is not a homogenous mass. For some folks, free on Pandora would work great. For others, they'd rather not have their music played for free. There's no reason one size has to fit all.

Right now it seems the law is so crazy that it does not allow artists to have them music played for free. That has to be fixed.

Thanks for the great support, Shawn. Sit tight for now. We’ll definitely let you know if/when we hit the wall and need to make a racket...

Fingers crossed...

T>

It's ridiculous that internet radio is being attacked like this, but if you're waiting for Washington to do anything right, then you may as well pull the plug now!!

One of the unique things here has been the approach of analyzing music methodically and helping users to understand what it is that their ears are being drawn to.
I LOVE the podcasts. I feel like I am able to appreciate the intricacies of music so much the more and it has certainly influenced my PURCHASES.

I don't listen to mainstream crap and my taste is very eclectic. Pandora has been a way to discover amazing artists and yes, I do go out and buy CDs from indie labels and shops. So stop friggin' whining that the fat cats aren't getting their cut. Given the amount of crap that is produced, no wonder we don't want to pay for it (much less listen!). If there was any thought or intelligence behind it, we might reconsider. But hey, the smarter of us will continue to boycott the big labels, support the small artists, and seek out new veins of incredible sound. It'll just take a bit longer to find it and we might not end up with such an amazing education as what Pandora readily provides.

All said, Tim and everyone at Pandora, please please please don't leave us! You are the bliss of my work day and a motivation for many more hours of learning and listening. Whatever happens, let us know where to keep tabs on your genius!

To me pandora is up there with google - the best website of all.

This service has been 100% awesome the entire time I've used it, and I have found many new and exciting artist because Pandora gives me new artist to listen to which I normally would never hear.

Pandora deserves a chance. I e-mailed my congress man and told them to stop this madness. DID YOU!

Thank congress and all those who sided with the "established" money for helping to kill new life in how we all listen to music.

I'll end up listening to the crappy radio stations I currently avoid, and I won't be buying any of the new artists I discovered via streaming radio.