Pandora is Doomed

My eyes swelled up with tears as I read this article. Pandora has been running off advertising and venture capital, and was projecting to finally be in the black in 2009, but the Copyright Royalty Board finalized its decision to double the royalties internet radio must pay.

6 months ago my music listening could be broken down to:
10% Pandora
5% Last.fm*
85% iTunes

But now, I'd say that the rankings have changed to:
80% Pandora
2% Last.fm*
18% iTunes

Given that this affects all internet radio, will any of it last? Last.fm seems to have a better business model, since they have paid subscriptions, and the listening isn't all mainstream, there are a lot of artists who upload their music for free - these factors would reduce their cost per play. But, hopefully they won't go under, they'll figure something out...



I wanted to make reference to Pandora's box, but I couldn't decide if this would be analagous to the box being opened, closed, or smashed to bits. Because the box contains chaos, yet the service is being shut down... it's too much for me. Any thoughts on that? Anyhow, thanks to merrickmtg for the news (from Twitter).

Photo: Flickr

*Even though I'm not listening to Last.fm directly, all my tracks are still being scrobbled there.

Godspeed.


This posted tagged as: music, politics, money

Recent posts tagged as money:

• Gold Farming for Development
• Selling Free Items
• Moving Fees

#1: by Bill Kanapaux on 08/18/08 @ 9:24AM EST


This is terrible news. I love Pandora and have been using it for about two years. The music I've found there is responsible for about 50% of my CD purchases over the last year.

You'd think that musicians and record labels would try to find some middle ground with Internet broadcasters. Otherwise, they're just hurting themselves.


Reply to this comment.

Name:


Website:


Enter a valid email:

(Gravatars and retaggr profiles are supported.)

Receive notification of followup comments?
Yes No

Comment:
(First time commenters: Don't use <a href> tags or you'll be flagged as spam.)


Reply to main post. (To reply to an individual comment, select it above.)