Idolator

I've been putting off writing a post about the possible demise of the Music Genome Project-powered streaming site Pandora—which may be sunk because it might have to pay royalty fees that add up to 70% of its revenues—for most of the day, because I'm not really sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, yes, the royalty structures set up by the fee-collecting regulatory body (and RIAA spinoff) SoundExchange are a bit high, and do encourage a lot of new sites to operate in the dark so they can get out of bankrupting themselves right away. On the other hand, SoundExchange doesn't solely represent artists on majors, and I'm wary of sites like Pandora that seem to want to have their cake (creating technology that's all about sampling music for free) and eat it too (not paying musicians under the guise of "promotion" and keeping any revenue for themselves). And on a third, possibly selfishly concealed hand, I don't really use Pandora; the few times I have sampled it, its utility has been spotty at best; and I'm wary of the online outcry in favor of the service, because of the whole outsized importance of technologically triumphant Digg Nation types in any debates involving the intersection of music and technology. So, readers, I'm opening the floor to you all, in hopes that someone out there can convince me to pick a side. Think of it as a chance to dust off those debate-team-honed skills! [WP]

Last week, SoundExchange, the organization that collects performance royalties on behalf of music's copyright owners, offered a slight reprieve to radio stations, saying that it would hold off collecting the per-channel payout of $500—which would result in "personalized radio" sites like Pandora paying the organization a huge chunk of money—until 2008. But is SoundExchange offering this stay of execution for strategic reasons? The founder of "extremely independent" streaming-radio outlet SomaFM thinks so. From Listening Post: More »

Today's Wall Street Journal takes a look at the Copyright Royalty Board's recent proposal to increase the amount of royalty rates for online radio stations. If the hikes are put into effect, they could force sites such as Pandora.com and Accuradio to shell out thousands of dollars in royalty payments—or worse, put them out of business altogether. So who's to blame here? More »

Yesterday, we mentioned that CREAMaid, a blog-payola service that only sounds like a dessert topping, seemed to be dispensing Lincolns to bloggers who touted music-recommendation service Pandora.com on their sites. As it turns out, Pandora knew nothing of CREAMaid's $5/post bounty; the blog-floggers' Pandora-love was apparently real, and not cash-fueled. Pandora's CTO stopped by and set the record straight: More »

As if the Pandora.com phenomenon wasn't annoying enough—really, what kind of lazy music fan needs a computer program to tell them that Elastica sounds like Wire?—Yeti Don't Dance discovers that music bloggers can now get paid to shill for the site via CREAMaid, which sounds like a concert benefit for dairy farmers, but is actually a pay-to-post PR-scam. More »

If you're a fan of the music recommendation service Pandora, you might want to check out "15 Ways To Get More Out Of Pandora" from our always-useful sister Lifehacker. Included are suggestions for improving Pandora's drag on your computer and refining its music selections, as well as—shh!—instructions on ripping music from the site with just a few keystrokes. More »

A statistic that should make any record company executive do a double-take is buried within the Times' once-over on music-recommendation service Pandora: More »