So, the latest news is that Randora may have to shut down because it can not afford the royalties it has to pay to labels and artists. It would be interesting to see how much of those gov’t sanctioned royalties actually make it to the artists, but that is a topic for somebody else.
Wired has a good roundup today where they speak with Tim Westergren, who we spoke with a while ago and featured in an interview. It comes as no surprise that Pondora can’t survive with the higher rates, which is obviously a concern for anyone who likes Internet music.
The key issue though is that the market simply changes too fast for the government regulators to keep up. How can they, when we barely can? The same issue applies online privacy. We featured Auren Hoffman in an interview as well and he spoke at length about how quickly the industry is changing, the number of players, and how data is growing exponentially.
I don’t propose to have the answers, but I think the music industry will have to work with the service providers (Pandora) and others directly. Either they do or all players fail outright and the important players (consumers) are very unhappy. As they will be if Pandora goes under.
The RIAA is invested in keeping the labels key players and with the government stepping in they are simply prolonging this status quo. However, does anyone really think that the labels are necessary for distribution?
So please, regulators keep out of it and let the market decide. It won’t be easy, and most likely won’t be pretty, but the job will get done!
