[chinpokomon]

It seems the biggest problem is the metric used to establish royalties. Broadcast mediums like radio can't accurately account for how many listeners they have, and so their licensing terms are based on plays. Pandora on the other hand knows exactly how many listeners it had, because the stream is per individual, nit broadcast. Neither medium accounts for inactive listeners, but I would expect the distribution would be similar. The bottom line is that Pandora is closer to every individual having their own radio station and so of course you cannot evaluate their worth the same way, despite what the original article was trying to do.

Pandora's model actually works better for the artists, since there is metadata that could be used to spy on American citizens... whoops, wrong story; that could be used to connect to fans in markets the artist may not have had access to previously. Maybe Pandora should be selling that information to the artists and labels, although I don't know that they don't do that already.

Both radio and Pandora are more appropriately described as advertisement. Playback restrictions of both formats means that listening to something is not purely selective in the part of the listener. I can't request that Pandora play Cracker's Low, anymore than I can shout that request to my radio. However both give me exposure to music that I might not otherwise hear. Extra credit goes to Pandora for giving me easy access to the Artist, Album, and Song Title, as well as up sell links whereby I can purchase the music I'm listening to.

Pandora provides much more value than terrestrial broadcast - value for which the music industry should probably be paying Pandora. I fully appreciate the positron Pandora finds themselves in, but they aren't in a fair fight, and the artists that should be supporting them don't seem to understand that distinction for their own good.