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

Don't forget that Pandora sells advertising. Both Jango and Pandora are for-profit companies. They exist to make money, and I see nothing wrong with that (for the record, Jango was hugely popular before they added the airplay component). I'm not as much interested in their motivation as I am in how they can help independent artists expand their fanbases.

Yes, payola is bad - deceptive, immoral, and illegal. Can we talk about Jango now? The term simply doesn't apply. Here are a few ways that it differs from traditional radio, both terrestrial and internet:

1. Jango is not regulated by the FCC, and is not breaking any laws that I'm aware of.

2. Jango makes it very clear when an indie is being played. The site opens a pop-up asking for feedback in the form of a rating, comment, or becoming a fan.

3. Jango has a "buy" button built into the player, linking to iTunes and Amazon.

4. Jango is personalized radio. There are no music directors. Users pick what artists they want to hear, and Jango will play those artists, along with similar artists, both major and indie. The vast majority of plays are majors.

5. Jango has multiple filters to ensure the site won't be overrun by crap, which is in nobody's interest. Listeners would leave the site and artists would stop paying for plays.

6. Jango has a social networking component, with profiles, comments, friends, and custom stations.

7. Jango facilitates direct communication with listeners, through comments, messages, and bulletins. I've got hundreds of comments, obviously from "real" people, on my profile: http://www.jango.com/music/Color+Theory

8. Jango offers demographic and fan overlap reports to help artists focus their targeting.

Could we at least entertain the notion that they genuinely want to help indies succeed?

This conversation reminds me of the many times I've defended Taxi. Some people assume they are sharks because they take money from musicians, who often have nothing to show for it. Google "taxi scam" and you'll see what I mean. We both know that Taxi is legit, but if I answer your four questions in reference to their service, one might be led to believe otherwise. I don't get the names and direct contacts of the people they play my music to, I don't know where those people are located, they've never "purchased anything" (in this case, inked a deal), and since I don't have their contact info, I can't write any notes for them to respond to. I've never made a penny from their service, after paying $3,000 or so over ten years. Still, I believe they've fulfilled their end of the bargain.

As for Jango, I get a listener's username, age, sex, and location, and can contact them directly through my control panel, both individually and collectively. One listener bought a CD and t-shirt from me directly, but I'd guess that most sales are from iTunes and Amazon via the "buy" button. My Amazon sales are way up for the month, but I've got a lot of balls in the air right now, so I can't necessarily attribute that to Jango. I won't know about digital sales until they're reported to CD Baby. Jango only recently added the bulletin feature, but I've received eight messages in response. So again, lots of speculation involved, but my answers to your questions are essentially yes, yes, yes, and yes. In my humble opinion, those aren't the questions we should ask in trying to position ourselves for an all-you-can-eat streaming future.

A label owner friend of mine was targeting electronic and dance bands, but discovered through the fan overlap report that Britney Spears fans loved the band he was promoting. He changed his targets and saw a huge spike in Amazon sales, which he attributes to Jango. The comments on my blog post show that we're not the only ones encouraged by the results so far.