Pandora.com - underintegrated... and failing?

[starstuff]

Anybody follow the online music business here?

The news today is about Pandora.com, which is IMO the top internet radio application out there. It's failing under the weight of new license fees from SoundExchange, and my first reaction was to blame those darn megacorporations for squeezing out the little guys, but then I read this (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080818-pandora-cant-make-money-may-pull-the-plug.html) .

They make the point that Pandora is leaving a lot of money on the table. The whole thing is packed with integration points and they have not developed most of them.

I love Pandora -- Mark... please save them! :)

[add2it]

You can save them by sharing Mark's www.IntegrationMarketingSuccess.com with them. :D

[sylviaheins]

it's only birthing pains. . . artists will eventually free themselves from these weighty behemoths who dictate their affiliations. no writer or musician was ever forced to join a performance rights organization against their wills (we hope)- which is at the root of this if you check it further- there is creative commons instead; what's happening is that music is experiencing decentralization, and it's not going with out a fight. But the middlemen who craft all the deals and shut down things like pandora will be grasping at straws because things flowed a different way.

The 'megacorporations' only have the power we give them with our minds and dollars and attention; besides which, they cast a much greater shadows than is their actual size.

[bmalonson]

While admitting there is lots of room for cross-selling and up-selling, SoundXchange is on the verge of destroying a marketplace.

As a Pandora user, I have no problem with ads, but the reason I listen is because it is free (although I have paid for Yahoo LaunchCast in the past).

However, I choose when and whom I will listen to. It looks like the SoundXchange bean counters ran some numbers and feel they are losing money. What they are not looking at is the market dynamics and the fact that an Internet radio listener, is a different animal than a Satellite Radio subscriber or an over the air radio listener.

Shut down Pandora and any revenue you may have made off of me is dispersed out into the ether.

The reason I paid for LaunchCast is you could sample the free version, but the commercials quickly drove you nuts. You could then "disable" the commercials for $36 a year. By that point I knew the value of the service and was willing to pay for the convenience of commercial free music.

I was willing to pay money to solve my problem, i.e., commercials.

[john.h.stringer]

I think many musicians, even independent ones like myself, see SoundExchange as a good thing given we get paid for owning the copyright and for performing. But its all about perspective.... mine is different from yours and so on.. so I won't try to convince you to see things my way. But I do think that since SoundExchange exists, Pandora will have to adapt or fade. Integration Marketing seems like a smart solution for them.