Pandora To Pay Artists Millions More

The Copyright Royalty Board, has just delivered a crucial decision on the statutory per-stream rate paid out to recorded music rights holders by non-interactive digital ‘radio’ platforms such as Pandora and iHeartRadio.

And for labels and artists everywhere, after months of heavy lobbying on both sides, it’s good news: the non-subscription per-stream rate set by the CRB will be $0.0017.

That’s $0.0003 more per stream than recorded music rightsholders currently receive from Pandora, and will apply for five years – from 2016-2020.

According to MBW calculations, that will bring record labels and artists an additional $471M over the next five years from Pandora at current consumption rates – a figure that could go much higher, depending on the platform’s growth.

As it stands in 2015, the webcasting rate paid by Pandora to labels and artists in the US is $0.0014 per ad-funded (free) stream – up from $0.0013 in 2014.

That money is paid out to SoundExchange, which then passes it on to recorded music rightsholders.

Pandora told the CRB last year that it wanted to bring down this rate to $0.0011 per stream. However, SoundExchange has been arguing wants to almost double it to $0.0025.

So with today’s CRB-approved $0.0017 per-stream rate now set in stone, Pandora will be forced to pay out approximately $0.0003 more per stream to labels and artists than it is currently.