Another artist has come out against the royalties paid out to artists by the top two music streaming services of our times (Pandora and Spotify). In a widely-circulated Pitchfork article called “Making Cents,” Damon Krukowski of Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi reveals some truly startling figures: “Galaxie 500′s ‘Tugboat’ was played 7,800 times on…
What do you do if you have a lot of money from owning the entire desktop computer market for decades, but people don’t buy as many if your phones as you wish they would? Clearly, you use some of that money to make your phone more attractive to consumers. That’s the angle apparently being taken…
Earlier this month, Pandora revealed artist payouts in the millions, as part of its ongoing campaign to reduce the royalty rate for online radio — or at least add a similar burden to FM radio, which pays no performance royalty. To be clear, Pandora phrased this carefully in its blog post on the topic, saying…
Music apps have quote demonstrably given us more ways to access and listen to music than ever before. As cool as that is, it can also be a headache to jump between them — say, Pandora, iTunes, Rdio, and Spotify. Assuming you’re a Mac person, an incredibly elegant solution exists to your problem: Americo Trading’s…
At the SF Music Tech conference today, Pandora founder Tim Westergren shared some numbers with attendees shortly before a post appeared on the company’s blog that might surprise the “free music doesn’t pay” contingent. Here are some of Pandora’s annual payouts to artists (and their associated rightsholders such as labels and publishers), which the company…
When you press play in any music service, you want to hear music right away. Even if the files you’re playing are stored up in the cloud, web and mobile apps must maintain the illusion that the files live on one’s own device. If the lag time is too long, our brains tell us that…
Back in 2007, webcasters really scared technology journalists with the news that they would not survive the royalty rates handed down Copyright Royalty Board. We liked internet radio. So did seemingly everyone else. Why did three judges (pictured to the right), whom some said were beholden to one industry (the music industry) at the expense…
A bold upstart from Venice, California turned heads this week with the proclamation that it’s about to unveil a “new ultra-fast HTML5 player to rival Pandora and Spotify.” Another audacious claim: “This alpha test of our innovative player shows it to be a Ferrari in a field of minivans.” Let me get this straight: The…
Crystal Harris of North Carolina was enjoying to the Garth Brooks station on the free version of Pandora, when a message appeared on her iPhone asking her to support Mitt Romney’s presidential bid by sharing her email address with the Romney campaign via Pandora. She was outraged, and tweeted the screenshot along with the hashtag feared…
Pandora and other webcasters who fought for lower royalty rates a few years ago rejoiced when they achieved rates they thought would allow them to achieve profitability, back in 2009. Yet questions still surround the ability of webcasters such as the now-public Pandora to turn a profit, given that their payments to copyright holders increase at the…
Responding to complaints about its practice of limiting data plans it sold as “unlimited,” AT&T clarified the amount of wireless data its smartphone customers can use before it starts throttling their bandwidth this week. The new limits at which AT&T will slow down users’ bandwidth: 3GB per month for smartphone users or 5GB for subscribers…
Our article about the “unsexy” issue of offline playback — a feature that allows streaming apps to store music and video temporarily so you can play it on the go without impacting your wireless data plan — attracted a fair amount of attention earlier this week, so we decided to dig a little deeper. After…
The current crop of car stereos that work with apps mostly do so by interfacing with your smartphone. Observe, as we test cars capable of connecting to MOG and Pandora through an iPhone. In those cases, the car’s standard dashboard hardware controls the apps, and displays the content — albums, artists, songs, and so on…
The more the Consumer Electronics Show changes, the more it stays the same — and by “it,” we mean the internet-enabled refrigerator that can inevitably be found somewhere on the CES showroom floor. I’m half-convinced that these things only exist to give tech reporters a reliable oddity to write about each year as an example of…
Tired of listening to music on your lonesome? Facebook might have the answer. About a month ago, the social network built some “connective tissue” between music fans and the services they use to listen. At its most basic level, Facebook now lets you A) let your friends know what you’re listening to on supported music services, and…
