royalty rates

When people like myself hear the term "direct" being used in relation to artists and their fans, it often conveys a better deal is being struck for the artist(s) in question.

Unfortunately, Sirius' desire to ditch SoundExchange and strike "direct licensing" deals with the labels will result in a loss of revenue for nearly every artist involved.

We mentioned this earlier, but with Pandora scheduled to go public this week, it seems to bear repeating.

Over the last couple of years, Pandora, which is a service that I'm a fan of, has repeatedly told the press that it is profitable.

Just recently, we wrote about how a ridiculous ruling by the Australian Copyright Tribunal, boosted the royalty rates that gyms needed to pay if they played any music covered by the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA).

In some cases it went from less than $1 per class to $1 per participant per class.

Last year, we wrote about an effort by the Australian performance collection society, the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA) to massively boost royalty rates played by gyms, who often use music in exercise classes.

This followed a similar effort with massively boosting rates at clubs and bars, which led those clubs and bars to stop playing covered music.

It looks like the same thing is happening in gyms as well.

Beyond being a world famous musician, engineer, producer and journalist, Steve Albini has long been pretty outspoken about the music business itself -- and while I don't always agree with him, I appreciate that he speaks his mind and often presents his arguments in ways that make me think and reconsider some of my own positions.

Even though we love Pandora, there was a time when most of us, even Pandora’s founder, saw little hope that the startup could survive if Internet roy