Copyright License Fees Drive Pandora Out of Canada 254
An anonymous reader writes "Online streaming music services such as Pandora are abandoning plans to launch in Canada, claiming licensing fees are too high: 'These rates ... are astronomical,' Tim Westergren, founder of California-based Pandora, wrote in an email to The Canadian Press. The agency that collects music royalties in Canada on behalf of record companies and performing artists wants to charge web-based music sites that stream to mobile devices the greater of two figures: 45 per cent of the site's gross revenues in Canada or 7.5-tenths of a cent for every song streamed. Meanwhile, record labels are blaming the lack of online music services in Canada on piracy: 'Why would you spend a lot of money trying to build a service in Canada when Canadians take so much without paying for it?' said Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, which represents major record labels."
Slacker (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Heh (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't buy music at all. Then again I haven't had the urge to listen to the crap they pump out on the radio either. Regardless, you'll find that most canucks are united on this issue, that if they're going to tax us on something. We've already paid our dues to download it. I suppose that whole cradle to the grave idea of paying for something can bite you in the ass...
Re:Slacker (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would they do that? No one wants to lug around Yet Another Gadget. Although you can buy Pandora-equipped stereos, Pandora apps work just fine on smartphones. Even back in '07 Pandora partnered up with Sprint for firmware packages on Sprint phones so Sprint customers could use Pandora on their phone... nowadays you can use Pandora on just about any new smartphone. Especially since any smartphone worth its salt supports multitasking... why would you need a separate device?
Re:Henderson is a liar (Score:4, Interesting)
How did this media surcharge come about? Because Mr. Henderson's own organization, the CRIA, successfully lobbied for it! [arstechnica.com] That's right. They insisted that Canadians must pay a surcharge in order to legally record music...
Not quite all the truth. Those fuckers lobbied for surcharges on media that I use to back up my OWN PERSONAL DATA. That's right, I have to pay fucktards like him and shitty "Canadian" artists (that can't make a hit) to use media that has absolutely no copyright material on it, just my family photos. Fuck them all to death.
Hypocrisy (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, record labels are blaming the lack of online music services in Canada on piracy: 'Why would you spend a lot of money trying to build a service in Canada when Canadians take so much without paying for it?' said Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, which represents major record labels."
Let's not forget that the CRIA is facing a six billion dollar lawsuit [boycott-riaa.com] over commercial copyright infringement of over three hundred thousand songs. Regardless of your position on piracy, these guys have no leg whatsoever to stand on. If they're going to go after individuals for noncommercially sharing music, first they'd better clean up their own mess.
Re:45% of revenues is particularly weird (Score:1, Interesting)
More importantly, they don't base it on profits (gross or otherwise) because they know first hand just how creative you can get on your costs. If you showed a negative profit would they pay you money?
Re:Slacker (Score:2, Interesting)
And Pandora doesn't allow you to record multiple streams in advance and skip around between streams and songs with fastforward willynilly. Slacker does that.
Also don't need to remain connected over a shitty cell network, instead I have a dozen hours of streams already recorded and I can listen to them whenever I want without draining the my phone battery during constant 3g use(which is just short of GPS as far as phones and battery life performance goes).
If you use your phone to do everything, that's cool, but I use my PSP for gaming, my phone for phoning, and my Slacker and Sansa Fuze for music listening because they're better at doing the task at hand and have better battery life under those conditions.
in 10 years... (semi off topic rant) (Score:1, Interesting)
In the near future, no one will pay for music. The only people still buying music are the copyright apologists and those who don't know how to download. As culture advances, these people will become fewer.
It is accepted economic principle that in a free market, the price of a good naturally approaches the marginal cost of production. The marginal cost being zero. Granted, the market isn't exactly free: record companies have a monopoly on their product and piracy is the black market, but since copyright is unenforceable, the playing field is level.
This sort of price gouging is an example of why copyright is a flawed concept, especially in the digital age. It's anti-market and immoral.
Re:Fools and their folly (Score:2, Interesting)
Not just customers, but clients. SOCAN is rubbish. I used to be a recording and performing musician, and SOCAN was nothing but a hassle, and certainly hasn't represented me, my views on music distro, or assisted in making a single cent off my music.
The whole system is corrupt and consists of liars and cheats ripping off musicians and music lovers.
Performance royalties != licensing fees (Score:3, Interesting)
It's worth pointing out that there are several different agencies and several different sections of copyright law at work here. Purchasing a song for your own use and playing a song in a public place (or over internet radio) are two different things. I often see people in the US confusing the RIAA with ASCAP and vice versa, and a little clarity might be helpful.
So, in the US:
The RIAA represents distributors and publishers.
ASCAP and BMI represent songwriters and publishers, who are supposed to get a royalty when a piece of music is performed or played in a public place (or over internet radio).
SoundExchange represents performers or recording copyright owners, who are supposed to get a royalty when their recordings are played in a public place (or over internet radio).
So when all hell breaks loose and Justin Bieber does a cover of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean that is then streamed over Pandora, Soundexchange would collect royalties for Bieber's performance and ASCAP would collect royalties for Michael Jackson songwriting. If the original Billie Jean is streamed over Pandora, then Jackson would be (I believe) entitled to royalties as both the performer and the songwriter. These are performance royalties and are typically paid by the entity playing the recording (in this case Pandora).
When 100 trillion pre-teen girls try to buy a copy of Bieber's version of the song, they pay iTunes or WalMart or whatever, which is then supposed to pay the distributors. These are not performance royalties and are not administered by ASCAP, BMI, or SoundExchange. When you, out of morbid curiosity, illegally download the track, the RIAA will sue you to the tune of $xx,000,000 on behalf of the distributors.
I say this because it's important to know that even though these organizations are related, they are not the same. Also, performance royalties in most cases actually make it to the artist, so I'm hesitant to hate on ASCAP (I'm a member) although sometimes I wish they would just chill out a little bit.
Re:Piracy is not the problem. It is greed. (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to buy a lot more music on iTunes when it was 99 cents but now, with variable pricing, virtually all songs on the Canadian iTunes are 1.29 CAD each so I have stopped buying so much.
What really sucks is you can only vote with your wallet by not paying, in which case they just blame reduced sales on piracy.
I wish there was a way to put your money where your mouth is and have a "Buy At $X", so you could refuse the song at $1.29 but make a binding offer to buy it at $0.99 that month (there would need to be some kind of time limit to the offer). That would create realistic metrics of what people are willing to pay and give the seller the opportunity to accept the offers. You could calculate pricing elasticity a lot more accurately that way and maximize profit (you CAN make more money by selling for less, especially when you have infinite supply.. for some reason the music industry doesn't get this).
Re:Welcome to socialist utoipan taxes (Score:5, Interesting)
You are correct though that Canada is not a great contry, it is the greatest country in the world. Canada is safe, beautiful, clean, and rich.
Re:What about indie labels? (Score:1, Interesting)
I can stream piles of indie artists' songs for absolutely free from CBC Radio 3: http://radio3.cbc.ca/ Why would I pay for a service?
Re:Fools and their folly (Score:3, Interesting)
``Mr. Henderson is an idiot, no offense to the intellectually challenged out there.''
I'm not sure who is the real fool here. Is it the man who spouts the lies, or the people who fall for the rhetoric?
We have a similar situation in the Netherlands: we pay a levy on blank media, which is used to compensate rights holders for the copying we are allowed to do. Downloading of music and video is included among the things you are allowed to do. Yet, our copyright watchdog, BREIN [anti-piracy.nl], has issued statements and publications where they have called such downloading illegal. Does that make them idiots? Perhaps, but almost everybody I have asked actually believes that downloading music and video from the Internet is illegal. People will even say they have "illegally downloaded" something if they downloaded it from the Internet. I think the real fools are all those people who believe that what they do or want to do is illegal, even though it isn't. Also, I am really, really pissed off at BREIN for propagating these falsehoods.
Re:Heh (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously its down to the big companies to then turn to the public with press releases like this and make it look like the big bad recording artists are greedy with their only source of income and that if they keep the pressure up and bend the truth a little, they can often cut out a huge percent of this unnecessary cost of paying the actual creators of the song and not just renting it from their owners, the record Label. Youtube managed this by putting public pressure on them by blocking music videos in the UK till they agreed to let them have it for almost free.
I must add that a friend of mine who is a professional recording artist is my source for this, and is therefore far from unbiased.
Re:Henderson is a liar (Score:2, Interesting)
Then again, the link that I found using Google says you are full of shit [neil.eton.ca]