Pandora’s attempt to get lower royalty rates via its purchase of KXMZ Rapid City, SD has begun to receive backlash from recording artists.
Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason wrote an editorial in Monday’s USA Today claiming that Pandora is looking to make artists take an 85% pay cut.
A more detailed posting came from a blog post by Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker singer David Lowery. Lowery posted screenshots of his songwriter royalty payouts claiming he made $16.89 in the fourth quarter of 2012 for 1,159,000 spins of Cracker’s 1993 hit Low. The payment was for his 40% ownership of the song. Comparatively he posted that he made $1373.78 for 18,797 commercial radio spins and $181.94 for 179 plays on SiriusXM.
Wow! We crunched the numbers: Cracker "Low" Royalties Per Play: Pandora = $0.000017 | SiriusXM = $1.02 | FM Radio = $0.74 cc:@SPINmagazine
— Radioscope Inc. (@RadioscopeInc) June 25, 2013
Obviously these payouts show just a small sample of what is being paid out, but also illustrates the differences in what is paid out by different services. It doesn’t show the performance royalties nor the share of each payout that goes to the record label although Lowery claims he will post his performance payouts later this week.
