Another day, another blog post criticising Pandora for its campaign to lower its royalty commitments for songwriters. This time it’s David Lowery on the attack, publishing extracts of his latest BMI royalties statement and using one track from his band Cracker as an example: “As a songwriter Pandora paid me $16.89 for 1,159,000 plays of ‘Low’ last quarter. Less than I make from a single T-shirt sale. Okay that’s a slight exaggeration. That’s only the premium multi-color long sleeve shirts and that’s only at venues that don’t take commission. But still.” Caveats include the fact that Lowery only owns 40% of the song as a songwriter, and he’s paid a separate royalty for being the performer of the song, which he plans to share next week (“higher but also quite lame”). The spirited debate in the comments section for his blog post is well worth reading, as well as Lowery’s views on what Pandora should do next. “Why doesn’t Pandora get off the couch and get an actual business model instead of asking for a handout from congress and artists? For instance: Right now Pandora plays one minute of commercials an hour on their free service. Here’s an idea! Play two minutes of commercials and double your revenue!”
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In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…