September 13, 2011:
Pandora's Tim Westergren, keynoting the RAIN Summit in Chicago Tuesday, said a benefit of his company to artists and performers is that they get paid. He added, "The same thing is not true for broadcast radio."That was a reference to the performance royalties paid by Pandora and other Internet companies to compensate performers and music copyright holders. Traditional radio has not yet had to pay any royalties beyond what they pay via their traditional fees to performance rights organizations ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI.
Westergren urged the music industry to do everything it can to accelerate the shift of radio to the Internet. The NAB has been a strong lobbying force for radio to prevent that from happening.Westergren also said during his address that Pandora has 900,000 songs from 90,000 artists, and that 90 percent of the songs in the Pandora catalogue played last month, for 37 million listeners. The company receives tens of thousands of e-mails every month, and, he said, "We answer them all individually."
Six years ago Westergren held a "town hall" meeting with listeners in Manhattan and two people showed up. One year ago, in the same place, more than a thousand people came to the meeting.
(9/14/2011 6:13:51 AM)
I see a lot of big numbers batted about when discussing music...900,000, 11,000,000...just how many seperate songs do these guys (Pandora and Clear Channel) really have? Personally, if there are 11 million songs, I have a feeling some of them must be by the CEO's kids.
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