Not Willing to Pay For Radio, But for Pandora, Jere?

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Wednesday, I wrote a piece about Jere Hester, who writes for NBCWashington.com, and his sage advice for SiriusXM talker Howard Stern, and how stupid such advice was.

Here's what he said in part of his column:

There are a lot of great things about satellite radio: channels dedicated to artists and genres, a lack of commercials and quality sound. But while Stern boosted subscriber rolls, a lot of folks still aren’t willing to pay for radio, especially with iPods and Internet services like Pandora providing the soundtrack to many lives.

Except, while Hester was breathlessly proclaiming how great an idea it would be for Stern to return to free-to-air radio, he left out a gaping hole of a fact: while Pandora provides a "soundtrack to many lives", it isn't exactly free, either.

In 2007, a federal panel agreed with a SoundExchange request and ordered a doubling of the per-song performance royalty that Web radio stations pay to performers and record companies. Under this scheme, internet radio would pay double the royalty as satellite radio.

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On July 7, 2009, Pandora announced that an agreement had been reached regarding the royalty issue, which would significantly reduce the royalty rate, making it possible for Pandora to stay in business. Also announced was that free listening would be limited to 40 hours per month, but can be extended to unlimited for that month for USD$0.99. "The revised royalties are quite high," the company's blog notes, "higher in fact than any other form of radio". The extended listening fee differs from "upgrading", which also disables advertisements, increases the bitrate to 192 kbps, and provides a dedicated music player (as opposed to listening through browser). This service, known as "Pandora One", costs $36 and is billed annually.

In other words, you only get 40 free hours of streaming now on Pandora every 30 days, and that's because now they have to pay double the royalty fees that SiriusXM pays to broadcast music. You want more than that? You gotta...pay for it. You want quality sound? You gotta pay more for it. And while SiriusXM competes with other forms of broadcast and electronic media, Pandora competes with similar forms of similar media, and that market is saturated enough as it is.

You could make the argument that buying extended listening time on Pandora is cheaper than satellite, and I'd be fine with that. What I'm not fine with is writers--media journos, that is--not doing their homework and making vapid assumptions, all in the effort to argue for something that isn't going to happen, no matter how many times speculative rumors come out. Of course, because Journalism is Dead; the next time that rumor--that Stern might go back to free-to-air radio--is floated, we're going to see the same crap written by most of the same idiots.