| The graph is funny. Pandora agrees it is roughly accurate. So, a payout (revenue; before expenses) of $1372 for 1,159,000 plays. Well, let's look at it in terms of an album where all songs are played equally. In reality, some songs will be played more than others. Assume an album of 10 songs. Okay, that's $1372 for 115,900 complete album plays. Well, you can sell an album for $10. More, actually, but let's say $10 since that's the digital rate. And you hope for repeat listens out of an album... ten listens? 100 would be pretty great, actually, maybe that's a true fan. Well, 115,900 complete album plays for $1372... at ten bucks apiece, that's akin to each purchase being played 1,000 times. In other words - ignoring other benefits of Pandora - you don't want to use Pandora to "sell" your music unless you have reason to believe that album purchasers would listen to your album 1,000 times or more. Only at that time would Pandora be worth it. That of course doesn't take Pandora's discovery benefit. I don't know if that would be enough to knock the numbers down to 100 or 10 album listens, but I suspect people often overestimate Pandora's discovery benefit. Just because a listener might discover a lot of new music doesn't mean that an artist gets a lot of new fans from Pandora. |
Now, someone who makes a lot of money off of radio plays, and sees radio plays shrink as Pandora plays increase, they might still feel they have a beef due to the lower songwriter royalty rates.
Spotify, on the other hand, is different. Spotify does rob album sales.