How much does Pandora pay to musicians?

The fact that music streaming services like Pandora have been paid to musicians (or recording studios) for using their songs has been known for a long time - according to this principle, these services work. The musician consents to the use of his music, the service places the song, users listen to it, and for each listening the musician (or studio) receives money.

The other day, Pandora founder Tim Westergren (Tim Westergren) said exactly how much musicians get for each “scrolling” of their music by users. It turns out that the amount is very, very small .

Payment is only 0.0014 US dollars for each audition. This is about 80% less than Spotify, a service that pays musicians amounts from 0.006-0.0084 US dollars for each audition.
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Even more interesting is the fact that Pandora is now fighting SoundExchange for the right to reduce payments up to $ 0.0011. The results of this dispute will be known later - at the end of this year.

Despite such payouts, the total amount that Pandora pays to studios and musicians is quite large: in 2014, $ 446.4 million was paid. This is about half of the company's total revenue, which amounted to $ 920 million. This year, according to Westergren, the company is going to receive revenue in the amount of more than a billion US dollars. At the same time, the service recognizes that the amounts paid to artists are very small.

In order to attract musicians, the company introduces new buns. For example, musicians can now record short audio messages that users can listen to. Lenny Kravitz - the first performer to take advantage of the new feature. “Artist Messaging” allows an artist who performs, for example, at a concert, to record a 15-second example of a performance for users who are waiting for a musician in another city, for example, in a week. Perhaps this will help raise sales of tickets for performances of artists.

In addition, the performers and representatives of the record companies now receive a comprehensive statistical tool that allows them to get detailed information about the use of tracks by service visitors.

Thus, the company is trying to attract new partners not with money, but with new functions that may allow musicians to attract more fans to their concerts.

By the way, the company last year showed a loss of 30.4 million US dollars, despite a 7% increase in the user base.