Pandora’s music royalty payments are the same or...
Pandora’s music royalty payments are the same or lower than other online retailers, said the MusicFirst coalition in a Tuesday release (http://bit.ly/11lPuVD), based on the results of a paper it helped fund (http://bit.ly/11JnFSI). MusicFirst, which represents record labels and some…
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artist groups, and which has opposed Pandora’s efforts to reduce its royalty rates, said major online retailers such as 1-800 Flowers, Netflix and Overstock.com pay the same proportion of revenue for “the products they purchase from others and resell to consumers.” At least two of Pandora’s competitors in the Internet radio space, Spotify and iTunes, pay higher proportions of their revenue in royalties, it said. Spotify’s website said it’s not bound by the same licensing arrangement as Pandora (http://spoti.fi/1aq8Xb0), which avails itself of government-set rates. Based on the March 2012 Billboard article the paper cites for the relevant iTunes figures, those percentages do not correspond to the percentages iTunes pays for its new Internet radio service, but rather for its music downloads (http://bit.ly/1aq7jpX). When asked about the comparison, a spokeswoman Kristen Hainen said “it’s not apples to oranges to consumers. They view all of these as alternatives and complements to each other.” The paper was written by Jeffrey Eisenach, managing director at the consulting firm Navigant Economics.