For those of you that have not been following closely. The “Internet Fairness Rado Act” is a bill that is being championed by Pandora Radio. Pandora radio has been pushing it’s listeners to write their congressmen on behalf of Pandora and in support of this bill.
But Pandora has not honestly explained the bill to their listeners. They portray the bill as a fix to “discrimination” that internet radio suffers in comparison to traditional broadcasters. This is simply not true. In addition there are all kinds of nasty things in this bill that don’t really have anything to do with Pandora.
Here’s how you know you aren’t being told the whole story: The bill is also backed by Clear Channel and other traditional broadcasters. This is not poor little Pandora vs the other big broadcasters. They are on the same side. It’s big media vs the artists. Feel duped? Write Pandora. Click Here.
So for a little bit of fun we have decided to make an honest and fair version of the Pandora’s plea on behalf of the Orwellian named Internet Radio Fairness Act.
From the Pandora website
Their text is in black. Our more “truthy” text is in red.
INTERNET RADIO FAIRNESS ACT
An important piece of legislation has been introduced in Congress to
help end the long-standing discrimination against internet radio fire the copyright royalty board judges. These judges have made rulings that Pandora did not like in the past. This bill also muzzles any group that acts on behalf of “rightsholders” (artists) by threatening prosecution under The Sherman act for “impeding” any direct licensing between broadcasters and record labels. Direct licensing deals often allow record labels to take artists performance royalties and apply it to un-recouped balances. As it stands now these royalties must be paid directly to artists. This effectively muzzles artists,songwriters and their unions. This bill infringes free speech! We’re asking that you contact your representative today to urge them to NOT support the Internet Radio Fairness Act.
This bipartisan bill will NOT end royalty rate discrimination against internet radio and bring greater fairness to our industry. Because such discrimination does not exist. It may however keep Pandora’s stock price high while insiders sell millions of dollars of shares amonth. Today, the
discrimination disinformation is extraordinary. In 2011, Pandora paid over 50% of revenues in performance royalties, while SiriusXM paid less than 10%. But comparing shares of revenue is extremely misleading.
This is because
1) Pandora chooses to play one commercial an hour whereas Sirius plays approximately 13.
2) Sirius relies on subscription (lots of revenue) while Pandora relies more on advertising (much less revenue)
3) Sirius airs a lot of non music programming.
Internet radio brings millions of listeners
back to music, plays the songs of tens of thousands of promising working artists, enabling them to build their audience while receiving fair compensation. That’s why we want to pay artists 85% less. We would like artists to be unfairly compensated so we can profit more.
If you are a pandora listener, and you received this very misleading communication from Pandora and you now feel duped? Write Pandora and ask them some hard questions. Ask them why they failed to mention the bill fires the copyright judges. Ask them why they failed to mention the Sherman Act is in the bill? Ask them why they failed to mention they want to muzzle artists groups during direct licensing negotiations? Ask them why they never mentioned that Clear Channel is also behind this bill. Write them Click here.
You can also write the congressmen and senators who introduced this bill: