IT IS NO LONGER ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

      How many of us artists pay out to Internet Radio?  How many of us ever see a cent for our music spins?  The news is that Pandora Goes After Artist Royalties in Big Risk. The company has grown since 2007 off of undiscovered artists and mainstream artists as well, giving the company more than 60 million users in the past months and doubling their revenue every year.

 Now like everything else that was put into place to help the artist to remain relevant since physical CD sales have dropped, and Internet radio is on the rise. Pandora is in Washington, DC on Capitol Hill backing the Internet Radio Fairness Act, or IFRA, which lowers the amount paid out to artists through Pandora and other Internet Radio stations. If you are now asking, how much of a percentage they are trying to reduce this down too? The answer is 85 percent. Why? You may ask yourselves, when Pandora has a dominant market share of 72 percent of the Internet Radio market as written in the (Reuters) - Pandora Media Inc (P.N) report full-year revenue outlook.

It has now become political in order to drive the payout to the company and lobbyist that are fighting to make this happen. Other companies that are going for this same move is: Amazon, Chevron, Motorola and Yahoo. These companies are using the artists money that they pay into them, to pay out to the legislators to friendly up to Pandora and other stations like them that have eaten till they are full, and have built their wealth. Therefore; the little man can go back to suffering after making the rich richer, and the striving artist gets a hard look at reality. That politics will remain more important than the love of music and sales that help fuel the artist that keep working to get their projects out to the public.

Now that all this has gotten your attention; while doing my research I also found an article that showed how an artist earned his royalties when played by Pandora. With showing the difference between Internet Radio spins verses the pay from the regular Broadcast Radio spins. This article tells how Lowery has revealed his recent royalty payments from his 1994 Cracker hit known as “law.”

This explains how his royalties were paid out to him and his band with plays of 1.16million times on Pandora, with the split to the songwriter’s royalties, the shares of pay, and the amount earned per play. This also shows the amount paid from satellite radio company Sirius XM and regular radio station plays and payout as well to the artists.

For my readers let us do the math and focus on what is good for you and your future. It is more than just about the music and getting out there. It is about being fruit-full in what you want to do with your finished craft. You can sale it and make much of nothing or you can distribute it and make much of nothing. Learn the business, know the pros and cons, and calculate before your download your music to these online websites that suppose to be so friendly.

 At the end of the day we all want our part but without the stealing, cheating and backlash of thinking we will do it the right way to get our product heard.