Pandora Reveals How Much It Pays Artists

With digital music provider Rdio recently revealing that they will be paying $10 to musicians per fan on their site, music recommendation service Pandora Radio has gone on to reveal the amount of money certain artists have collected from them in light of critics’ claims that musicians make little to no money from music-streaming services. Sharing that some artists have received upwards of $3 million annually, Pandora founder Tim Westergren released a statement detailing dividends for artists.

 For over two thousand artists Pandora will pay over $10,000 dollars each over the next 12 months (including one of my favorites, the late jazz pianist Oscar Peterson), and for more than 800 we’ll pay over $50,000, more than the income of the average American household. For top earners like Coldplay, Adele, Wiz Khalifa, Jason Aldean and others Pandora is already paying over $1 million each. Drake and Lil Wayne are fast approaching a $3 million annual rate each.

Last month, Pandora rallied supporters around the Internet Radio Fairness Act, a bill introduced to the U.S. Congress which would lower the royalties music-streaming services pay, down to those comparable to satellite radio.

It’s hard to look at these numbers and not see that internet radio presents an incredible opportunity to build a better future for artists. Not only is it bringing tens of millions of listeners back to music, across hundreds of genres, but it is also enabling musicians to earn a living. It’s also hard to look at these numbers, knowing Pandora accounts for just 6.5% of radio listening in the U.S., and not come away thinking something is wrong.

Pandora was founded on the principle of supporting artists and we’re proud to pay performance fees. We think artists could and should ultimately earn even more.

Westergren also went on to describe the impact the bill might have on radio and musicians, saying:

Making performance fees fair for internet radio will drive massive investment in the space, accelerating the growth of the overall sector, and just as importantly accelerating the development of new technology that leverages the incredible power of the internet to build and activate new audiences. That’s where the great opportunity lies in the long run. The short-term reduction in revenue would be rapidly swamped by the overall growth of the sector. Imagine the impact on artists if this industry grew to become 25% or even 50% of radio listening.

According to The New York Times, last year Pandora paid about half its revenue to labels and performers, while Sirius satellite radio is currently paying at a rate of 8 percent.