Pink Floyd and David Lowery combined have made this a bad week for Pandora’s attempts to win the hearts and minds of artists and songwriters. Now the company is answering back with a lengthy blog post from founder Tim Westergren, who suggests that some of the criticism is “coming from a deliberate and orchestrated campaign funded by the RIAA, and some coming from well-intentioned artists who, because of this misinformation campaign, have been mislead about Pandora’s intentions”. He goes on to claim that the suggestion Pandora wants to reduce artist royalties by 85% “is a lie manufactured by the RIAA and promoted by their hired guns to mislead and agitate the artist community”, saying instead that Pandora’s plans would “grow total payments to artists”. Westergren also points out that artists aren’t getting any performance royalties at all from AM/FM radio in the US; suggests Pandora’s value is “much more than royalties” because of its promotional effects; and attacks “a few small, but powerful publishers” for opting out of ASCAP and BMI in order to negotiate higher royalty rates with Pandora.
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In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…