The Blood is The Life 08-12-2012

[miss_s_b]

• Pandora's Problem: The More It Sells the More It Loses - WSJ.com
  This is going to be a problem for spotify too, I reckon
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• Google Grants $1.2M to Help Analyze Female Roles in TV, Film | Underwire | Wired.com
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• Dave McKean's Art before and after photoshop
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• Mogulgeddon: Alan Sugar and Donald Trump compete to be most childish tycoon on the internet
  With bonus Piss Moron
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• Leveson proposals: PM may use royal charter to set up press watchdog | Media | guardian.co.uk
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• Off Life issue2 (pdf)
  Comic available in print in London and Bristol, and all over the world via the magic of the internet
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• Sexist Humor No Laughing Matter, Psychologist Says
  An old one, but one worth bookmarking to chuck out at people who say "I was only joking"
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• Anita Sarkeesian and the gamification of misogyny
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• Is politics impossible for ordinary people?
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• Ian McKellen Answers Twitter Questions On Hobbits, God, & Shopping | The Mary Sue
  3 Serena
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Comments

[innerbrat]

I wonder if music companies think, as I'm inclined to, that if Pandora and Spotify go under, the amount people pay to listen to their music will decrease to nothing. Spotify is the only way I listen to new music these days, and if I lost it, I certainly wouldn't be buying music instead.

[miss_s_b]

Spotify is the only way I listen to new music these days, and if I lost it, I certainly wouldn't be buying music instead.

Snap.

[innerbrat]

Jonatha Brooke's "$500 per million plays" is interesting, too. Because Pandora is a personal radio service, the average number of listeners per 'play' is between one and two - let's call it two.

Radio 1's breakfast show has about 6m listeners on a very slow day.

Which I guess means that every time Nick Grimshaw plays one of her songs, she expects to get $1500?

[miss_s_b]

I don't know what the radio license fees are in the UK, but I know they take up a huge amount of licence fees.

[innerbrat]

I am absolutely sure they do. But I also think that they probably pay per 'play' and not per listener.

And as Pandora plays each song individually for each listener, their revenue per play is probably considerably less than the BBC's revenue per play.

(Although it's probably impossible to work out how much every license payer is paying to listen to that single song, but you get the picture.)

My point is, I think - part of the grander picture of 'the way people pay for and listen to music is changing, so keep up, music industry' - that it's in the industry's best interests to support internet radio, and so they need to figure out how not to shoot themselves in the foot.

[miss_s_b]

I suspect the per play fee goes up for high listener shows, though.

But yes, you're right, the music industry needs to wise up.

[staceyuk]

Yes but WILL they? I have my doubts.

[(Anonymous)]

The rate used to be £7 for a single national broadcast, but that was more than a decade ago.

The only source I've been able to find on current rates actually compares US radio plays to Spotify -- http://davidtouve.com/2011/12/18/us-radio-versus-music-services-a-comparison-of-the-value-of-spins-versus-streams/ and comes to the conclusion that Spotify pays more per listener. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison though, partly because Spotify pays mechanical as well as publishing royalties (US radio only pays publishing royalties -- UK radio plays both). But more importantly, with normal radio, you can't choose when you're going to hear a song, so it acts as advertising for people to purchase it, while with Spotify it acts as a replacement for the purchase.

This doesn't really matter for the big hits, because big hits always make money. But it *does* affect smaller musicians. The National Pep EPs cost me about £500 each in recording costs. I make between 30p and £2 per EP from selling them, depending on where people buy them, in what format, and so on. That means that, roughly, I'd have to sell 500 copies to break even. I *haven't* sold that many, but it's not a completely unreasonable number. I'd need a million listens on Spotify to make the same amount back -- that *is* an unreasonable number.

That's not to say that Spotify is a bad thing -- I use it a *lot* myself -- just that it distorts the disparity between the successful and the unsuccessful.

[andrewhickey.info]

That was me (and if this anonymises me too, I'm Andrew).