A portion of the CDM interview struck me as interesting, “70% of the music that plays on Pandora comes off of albums whose sales rank is 10,000 or worse on Amazon.com. (Pandora is) playing an enormous amount of music that’s comfortably down the long tail.”

As far as I know, Pandora strongly adheres to playing (free) music that is not commonly aired on mainstream radio which to my ears is a good thing. (Sorry, hiphop and rap fans, but I like music with real instruments and real musicians, not “noise”). But if you do want to listen to something that’s current, you can opt-in (register and become a member) and listen to just about anything you want.

My point here is I think it’s a tragedy to “price” a highly accessible, highly successful and well respected media away from the public. This is a huge lose for “real” music lovers, those who can truly appreciate complex melodies, 3, 4 and 5 part harmonies and true musicianship at work. Pandora provided an avenue to good music to my ears. It’s a shame that this media will be lost due to greed.

If it didn’t show up on Yahoo videos I just didn’t know about it.

And even then most of the time without the videos the music isn’t worth buying.

Have you ever listened to Abbey Road in “gapless” mode?
You should her electric lady land in gapless mode, “mind” blowing.

You know what my latest kick is? Rummaging through my library with iTunes finding all manner of songs by different artists that I can hear one after the other in gapless mode.
You just can’t do that with CD’s

Anyway I am just a retired old coot who thought he would throw his two cents worth in.

thanks for taking the time to read this

PJ

Genji, I am entirely sympathetic to you concerns and perspective, but I think you are not considering the most interesting case of streaming – where nobody is making any money from it. All of the internet radio stations that I listen to carry no advertising, have no DJs and get by on a minimum of costs – a hosting service, the current streaming fees, and not much more. Wanting to paid part of what other people make from playing your music seems natural, but in truth, I think that a lot of the most intesting online “media” for me is not making money at all. The CRB rates don’t appear to take this into account in any way whatsoever.

I see no reason why you can’t get both a promotional and a monetary benefit from streaming — especially when we had a system where everyone was benefiting from that, until RIAA and the courts wrecked it.

Call me crazy, but I think ALL streaming music should be free for webcasting. Actually, by lowering the cost for those who stream media, it’s benefiting labels (or at least the artists) in the long run by generating popular support for their music. And if by some remote chance it does hurt the labels… too bad. It’s not government’s role to prop up failing business models. Government should only be concerned with laws and regulations that help everyone to the maximum benefit of society as a whole. Killing or limiting streaming internet radio is something that hurts society as a whole way more than it would ever benefit it.

As musicians, if our labels don’t know how to adapt to the way the market is headed, it’s best to part from said labels as quickly and amicably as possible. Let’s find labels who are technically savvy enough to not just acknowledge the presence of the net, but actively court the new forms of distribution and promotion available from it. Not trying to change or cripple it to fit an outdated model, but rather find the new business models that become possible through the freedom and lack of scarcity that the web allows.

ATA

But the streaming industry DID have a standardized, fair way of paying artists. Pandora, for instance, was legally streaming music under the restrictions provided by the law (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) — some of them good restrictions designed to keep people from just using it as a free online delivery mechanism (which would INDEED be bad) and keeping them using it as a recommendation system (GOOD). So did your favorite local public radio station, which actually paid a *higher* rate for streaming than broadcast *before* this ruling. (Broadcast pays nothing. Satellite pays far less than this ruling does. That obviously makes no sense — we should have one fair rate for all three. But the next best thing would be at least a practical rate for online.)

The question here is NOT free streaming — that question was decided five years ago. Music deserves to have a standard, fair rate for both publishers and labels, period. (And if you’re a self-published, self-recorded artist, incidentally, you get 100% of that.)

The problem is, the rate has to be proportionate to the income received. That’s not just about fairness — it’s a matter of practicality. Should it have been higher than it was? Maybe. Should it be so high that National Public Radio says their member stations will all have to kill their feeds? I don’t think so. Ironically, doing so would push people back to terrestrial radio which has NO such fee at all. The RIAA is claiming victory, but they’re actively killing the very format that was actually giving them a good rate. Totally nonsensical.

Alternatively, you could argue that streaming itself is bad because it doesn’t bring in the income that selling music directly does. But to make that argument would essentially mean saying radio itself was bad — and the massive parallel growth of the record industry alongside radio says that’s not the case.

So, just to be clear: we’re not talking about free distribution. Free distribution is a very bad idea, in my opinion at least, because it devalues music. I think it was a bad idea with radio. But rates that apply ONLY to digital streams (not on-demand digital deliver, mind you) and make it too expensive to stream at all are an equally bad idea. It could encourage illegal streams that pay artists nothing, and kill quality legitimate streams — both very, very bad.

There’s so obviously a middle road, but that only happens if you find a middle ground between labels, who want the highest rate possible, and streamers, who want the lowest rate possible. Finding that middle ground is good policy.

So, it is up to us as working musicians — whether we’re a lone indie artist or a successful producer — to call our Congresspeople and say give us a fair rate. Complaining is good, as long as it’s directed at the right people.

Hope I’m making sense… and let’s keep discussing this. :)