Jon Simons, head of SoundExchange on Wired: Listening Post
Other highlights of the conversation about what Pandora Radio should do to survive:
“I can’t live with (21 cents per song),” he [Simons] said. “They [Pandora] are not right now in the business of selling advertising. If they were… they’d actually have ads in the streams. But they say that’s what makes over-the-air radio bad.”
“He accepts that online radio stations play better, more varied music than their over-the-air counterparts, but wants them to adopt a similar, audio ad-laced format in order to pay SoundExchange what he says it deserves.”
I must agree, over the air ads ARE what makes terrestrial radio horrible. People paying for the ads want a large audience and what gets a large audience? Playing crap music ad nauseum over short periods of time. I’d really hate for services like Pandora to have ads I can hear in addition to the music. Can’t anyone come up with a good way to make money from music that ISN’T AWFUL ADVERTISING?!?
