JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Legitimizing Pay-for-Play

Pandora is great because it does everything with the sole motivation of providing the very best listening experience possible for their listeners. Jango is not great because it's motivation is to get you to spend more money buying more plays (and everyone else). It's not an editorial decision on what gets played, it's a payola decision. If you want to know what Payola eventually does for the listener in the long run, just listen to mainstream radio. It's not a good experience and because of that they are shrinking in numbers faster than they should be. The competition alone with other things like the internet would have caused a decrease, but their playlists and record of playing crap that was paid for both legally and illegally through a myriad of business decisions has ruined the listening experience. So why do you want to participate in a system that is doing exactly the same thing. It's a classic case of not learning from history and expecting a different result from the same action.

I haven't read your article not because I am not interest but because there's not enough time in the day right now. In addition, I want to have a discussion here so that folks who are visiting can get the answers without having to go back and forth to an outside site.

So what are the answers to my 4 simple questions? It seems you partially answered my question about sales versus cost. So you spent 100 dollars and you sold enough music to make back 50 dollars in profit? That's actually surprisingly good. Those 144 fans bought what, 75 music tracks? Can you be more specific?

I think based on your answers so far have a big case of wishful thinking. I agree 100% that if you subtract the payola portion of the scenario, the rest of it is a good thing. For me, Pandora is an honest company that deserves to thrive. Jango does not. And I don't think it can sustain itself because it's completely counter to what makes internet radio good.. actual decisions makers playing stuff they love, not stuff they are paid to play. It sucked on terrestrial radio and it will suck on internet radio. You WANT it to be successful so you hear it that way. But as this moves forward, people will migrate to things that honestly play the best music regardless of whether someone can pay for it or not. After all, if what they are doing was fair, why aren't they charging all the artists and not just the indies? The answer is if they only played what was paid for, there wouldn't be enough music to broadcast and their scheme would be instantly exposed for the crap that it is. If you play proven hits one after another and sneak in some paid for stuff, you might sustain it for a while. But when they add more content it will water down the good stuff and people will move on.

So far you haven't given me any reason to change my mind or position that it's a scam. It may be 100% legal (though I still want an attorney to explain how they escape legal problems with Sound Exchange etc.). I haven't had time to all Soundexchange to get an answer. I will try to get to that late next week.

Brian