How big a deal is Pandora for US body SoundExchange? Big. SoundExchange’s draft annual report reveals that it collected $371.9m of revenues from digital music services in 2011, up 40% year-on-year. Meanwhile, Pandora’s financials reveal that its last fiscal year (ending 31 January) saw it pay 49.7% of its $274.3m revenues to SoundExchange – which is where Billboard does some number-crunching (taking into account the month’s disparity in end-of-year date) to estimate that Pandora accounted for 38.6% of SoundExchange’s collections last year. Internet radio company Live365’s Angus MacDonald thinks the figures have implications for the next round of royalty negotiations. “With Pandora’s ever-growing listening hours and royalty payments, SoundExchange and the labels need a healthy Pandora as much as Pandora needs a reasonable pureplay-like rate for the next royalty term (2016-2020).”
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Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…