This past week Facebook and Pandora applications have appeared on Google Android. Both companies joined about 10,000 other Android applications. This will help Android-powered mobile phones effectively compete against the iPhone, Nokia, and BlackBerry phones.
The Google Android version of the Facebook application has a news feed, friend wall viewer, photo uploader, friend adding capabilities, and social network interaction features. The Android Facebook application allows users to add widgets to the home screen and add a phone dialer that calls friends who have phone numbers listed on Facebook. Facebook recently announced that they have about 65 million mobile users.
Pandora, the Internet radio station has also built a Google Android application. Pandora for Android has the ability to stream music based on genre or artists. The Pandora Google Android application can play in the background while opening other applications. Users can also put a thumbs up or thumbs down for songs. Pandora for Android is free and is only available in the U.S. right now.
Anyone with a BlackBerry phone that is able to download applications will notice that two new radio streaming applications have become available. Both Pandora and IHeartRadio are applications available for free.
Pandora is a music streaming service that I write about often. It monitors the music you enjoy and streams similar songs to your interest. There are several preset music stations on Pandora too.
IHeartRadio was made by ClearChannel. IHeartRadio streams radio stations that ClearChannel owns. There are about 150 different ClearChannel stations.
Both of these apps were pretty successful on the iPhone so I’m not surprised that they ported it over to the BlackBerry as well.
“I’m relieved, optimistic, and grateful to our listeners.” -Pandora Founder Tim Westergren
The U.S. Senate passed the Webcaster Settlement Agreement on Tuesday. This allows web radio stations to negotiate a more reasonable royalty rate for streaming songs on the web. Those prices will be contradictory to that set by Congress last year.
Now that the bill has passed The House and The Senate, it just has to be signed by President Bush. And royalty rates will then have to be negotiated between webcasters and the copyright-holding labels. The deal between the label companies and webcasters then have to be approved by Congress. The RIAA sided with webcasters like Pandora to push the bill through The House and The Senate. This is one of the few times I be proud of the RIAA!
“This is a welcome and encouraging development and a sign of the constructive working relationship between the music industry and Webcasters,” stated RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol. “Together, we want to make this marketplace work for both music fans and music creators.”
While webcasters like Pandora are fighting for the Settlement Act, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is currently dealing with an increase in royalty rates, pushed by the National Music Publishers’ Association. The association wants rates to be increased from 9 cents to 15 cents per track sold on services like iTunes. Apple responded by threatening to shut-down iTunes.
Apple is using the same strategy as Pandora! Pandora threatened to shut down their services if the Webcaster Settlement Act passed too.
“I have no doubt that an increase in the per track price would lower total music purchases at the store,” stated Eddy Cue, VP of iTunes. Kid Rock boycotted his most recent album from being sold on iTunes because he believes that Apple pockets too much of the artist’s hard work. I would not be surprised if you see a lot of other artists follow his lead. Why not offer to sell the DRM-free tracks for $0.99 on your own website and cut out the middle man?
Amit Chowdhry | September 28, 2008 | 676 views | Comments Categorized under Pandora
“We’re thrilled to let everyone know that the House bill passed! Thanks to your incredible support we were able to overcome the NAB’s efforts to derail us,”stated Tim Westergren, chief strategy officer at Pandora.“Phone calls rained into the congressional offices over the past 36 hours. Just amazing.”
Tim is referring to the House or Representatives passing the Webcaster Settlement Act. The Act allows Internet music streaming companies to negotiate royalty rates for playing songs at a rate lower than the price that Congress decided was mandatory last year. If the legislation doesn’t pass, it might set back Internet music companies like Pandora for months. The phone calls from the public helped the legislation pass with the House of Representatives.
The National Public Radio (NPR) helped push the legislation through the House too. The NPR is created and funded by Congress. And since NPR supports the bill, companies like Pandora benefitted from NPR’s connection to Capitol Hill.
The National Association of Broadcasters did not like the legislation because they feared that web streaming music companies would be able to make deals first. SoundExchange, the royalty-collecting arm of the Recording Industry Association of America extended their deadline to negotiate with the NAB until February 15 (from December 15), so a settlement was made.
The only thing that is left for Internet music streaming companies are to push for the legislation through The Senate and reach a royalties agreement with musicians and label companies.
Pandora is expected to reach $25 million in revenue this year. About $17.5 million is going towards paying royalty fees ($48,000 per day). Throw in the cost of bandwidth and Pandora doesn’t come out with much profit. This legislation is huge in order for Pandora to stay in business.
The Senate will be voting on the legislation tomorrow.
Amit Chowdhry | August 17, 2008 | 1,271 views | Comments Categorized under Pandora
Pandora is one of the best music streaming websites online today. About 1 million people use Pandora each day because they can create custom stations with their music preferences. Pandora is in the top 10 most popular applications downloaded on the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) App Store too. The one thing that stands between Pandora and success is royalty fees. Royalty fees is the one reason why Pandora is considering shutting down.
Pandora’s project revenue for this year is about $25 million. Seventy percent of that $25 million is going towards paying royalty fees. This means that $17.5 million is going towards royalty fees. This means that Pandora is paying close to $48,000 per day to be able to stream music from mainstream artists.
“We’re approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision,” stated Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora. “This is like a last stand for webcasting.”
Radio and satellite stations pay a fraction of what Pandora has to pay. TechCrunch points out that the difference between Pandora and traditional radio stations is lobbying power. Traditional radio stations are backed by companies like Clear Channel Communications (NYSE:CCU).
“We’re losing money as it is,” added Westergren. “The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we’re doing is wasting money.”
Pandora started in 2000 and has raised $21.3 million between 2000 and 2005. Previous investors include Labrador Ventures, Selby Venture Partners, WaldenVC, Peter Gotcher, Robert Kavner, Crosslink Capital, and Guy Kawasaki’s Garage Ventures.
Amit Chowdhry | June 4, 2008 | 655 views | Comments Categorized under Pandora
Yesterday Pandora announced that they have created a desktop application for their streaming music player. Tom Conrad, CTO of Pandora officially announced the desktop application software on the Pandora blog.
“It’s probably been on our to do list longer than any single feature. Today we’re dipping our toe into those waters for the first time with the release of a Beta version of Pandora Desktop.” The Pandora desktop application either gets added on the Windows tray or Mac dock.
Advertisements are embedded in the Pandora application to help the company generate money since streaming audio is expensive.Â
The application was built using Adobe AIR. The Adobe AIR application has to be downloaded in order for Pandora’s desktop application to work.
Internet radio listeners, forget about the Apple iPhone releasing on June 29th for one minute and realize the consequences of what will happen on July 15th, 2007. Royalty rates for Internet radio will be increasing at an alarming rate and was set by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington D.C. Two days ago, about 21 Internet radio websites shut down their service to make a statement. It was officially the Internet Radio Day of Silence on June 25th. I was not aware that this was going on until I read a blog post on Yahoo’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal[1].
“The new royalty rates are higher than the revenues anyone can hope to make from related advertising. In other words, we all lose money on Internet radio starting July 15th. Yahoo! has no intention of operating LAUNCHcast radio as a loss-leader,” wrote Ian C. Rogers of Yahoo! Music. Rogers began working for Yahoo! Music three and a half years ago after Yahoo! acquired Mediacode. Rogers wrote a brief history of the situation with the Copyright Royalty Board on the Yahoo! Music Blog.[2]
If the bill passes, Internet radio companies will start losing money. Less than 3% of Yahoo! Music subscribers pay for music and the money made from ads is not sufficient enough for the hike in royalty fees. So if Yahoo! Music keeps losing money along with the other Internet radio companies, keeping them afloat won’t be easy. Many companies cannot afford the royalty rates and may even shut down.
Royalties will increase between 300 and 1200 percent. Internet radio currently pays double of what satellite radio pays and Internet radio listeners jumped from 45 million listeners per month to 72 million listerners since last year. Yahoo! Music has been providing value to Internet radio listeners for years and for free. I don’t want to see the service taken away as it is one of my favorite products made by Yahoo!
