MetaFilter posts tagged with pandora

"...the ways in which musicians are screwed have changed qualitatively, from individualized swindles to systemic ones."

anazgnos — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:42:10 -0800

"The "Tugboat" 7" single, Galaxie 500's very first release, cost us $980.22 for 1,000 copies-- including shipping! (Naomi kept the receipts)-- or 98 cents each. I no longer remember what we sold them for, but obviously it was easy to turn at least a couple bucks' profit on each. Which means we earned more from every one of those 7"s we sold than from the song's recent 13,760 plays on Pandora and Spotify. Here's yet another way to look at it: Pressing 1,000 singles in 1988 gave us the earning potential of more than 13 million streams in 2012."

Making Cents: Damon Krukowski of Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi breaks down the meager royalties currently being paid out to bands by streaming services and explains what the music business' headlong quest for capital means for artists today.

When I started making records, the model of economic exchange was exceedingly simple: make something, price it for more than it costs to manufacture, and sell it if you can. It was industrial capitalism, on a 7" scale. The model now seems closer to financial speculation. Pandora and Spotify are not selling goods; they are selling access, a piece of the action. Sign on, and we'll all benefit. (I'm struck by the way that even crowd-sourcing mimics this "investment" model of contemporary capitalism: You buy in to what doesn't yet exist.) But here's the rub: Pandora and Spotify are not earning any income from their services, either. [...] Why are they in business at all? The answer is capital, which is what Pandora and Spotify have and what they generate. These aren't record companies-- they don't make records, or anything else; apparently not even income. They exist to attract speculative capital. And for those who have a claim to ownership of that capital, they are earning millions.

The Minds Behind Pandora

jefficator — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:34:40 -0800

Four years ago metafilter was introduced to Pandora. This weekend, the New York Times introduced the world to the minds behind the music genome project. The essential question guiding the project: are inherent properties of music more important than the social connections that bring music to us?

"Please remove this script, it can only contribute to getting the site shut down." The RIAA has taken action against muxtape.com.

crazyray — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:13:20 -0800

The RIAA has taken action against the much-beloved muxtape. Alas, the many predictions regarding muxtape.com's inevitable demise have proven to be true.. With the recent speculation regarding Pandora, who else is next? Also, here is what Metafilter users though of Muxtape the first time it was mentioned on the blue.

first time poster to the blue, please be gentle.

Congress killed the Radio Star

phaedon — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 10:10:01 -0800

"I've said all along, we are in this together." John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange - the royalty collecting arm of the RIAA - extends an olive branch through 2008 that will cap the advance payments internet broadcasters will have to cough up at $2500 per year. This comes in the wake of the Day of Silence, (it was June 26, did anyone notice?) spearheaded by Los Angeles-based terrestrial/online radio station KCRW (home of the brilliant Morning Becomes Eclectic) and SaveNetRadio, during which some of the biggest names in online radio - include Live365, NPR and Pandora - went dark for 24 hours, airing a one-hour broadcast twice during that day on the history of flat fees in public broadcasting. [direct .mp3, 38mb] Under the much-maligned changes made by our government's Copyright Royalty Board, the top six internet radio stations would have had to pay 47 percent of their total revenue (anticipated to be around $37.5 mil.) to the RIAA, starting this July. The Internet Radio Equality Act [summary, in its entire pdf glory] has been introduced to the House of Representatives, seeking to permanently reverse this decision.

Pandora Podcasts on music composition and performance

Ira.metafilter — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 15:04:05 -0800

The Pandora Podcast Series: "The idea behind them is to provide some interesting, and hopefully entertaining segments on various aspects of music theory. Kind of like a peek under the hood of music composition and performance using lots of musical examples." So far they've covered vocal harmony, drumming, electric guitar effects, recording vocals and elements of salsa. Schedule for rest of 2007.

They read the alt-weeklies so you don't have to

whir — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 01:30:54 -0800

SonicLiving is a website which tracks live events (mostly shows) in your home town, and can read in tracks from your last.fm or pandora account to notify you of interesting shows coming up in your area, as long as your area is one of the currently-limited areas they cover. (vide intra)

Music taste prediction down to a science?

Lush — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 23:10:25 -0800

Pandora. Bound to draw comparisons to Last.fm, LAUNCHcast, and Musicplasma, Pandora (formerly Savage Beast) is a music discovery web application that recommends music based not on popularity, usage habits of other users, or genres/categories but on the deconstructed elements of how the music itself sounds. Fruit of the Music Genome Project, music analysts have for more than five years spent 20 minutes analyzing each song in its ever-growing database for nearly 400 distinct attributes, so when you ask it, "Why is this song playing?" It answers, "Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features electronica influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, surreal lyrics, use of call-and-response vocals, and string section beds." (YES! Thank you!) Currently live on public beta. [Flash, 128kbps streams]

mathowie — Wed, 26 Jul 2000 17:38:02 -0800

Napster may be down, but pandora's out of the box, baby. Get OpenNap as soon as you can (if anyone finds a link to OpenNap, by all means post the URL)