We, the tech/startup/VC world, are not doing ourselves any favors by bragging about the big valuations we are raising money at. We are in fact doing ourselves great harm. Because it makes us look like spoiled brats who are being fed with a silver spoon. Those inside these companies (Spotify, Airbnb, Square, Twitter, etc, etc) know that is not what is really going on. We know how hard it is to build something really new and different. It is a struggle and nothing comes easy. But it is important to realize how the broader world sees it. And they just see billions December 05, 2012 at 11:14PM

according to internal Spotify data, after an initial burst of interest that resembles the pattern for sales of music, a funny thing happens. Songs in the company’s catalog are played again and again, with no diminution in popularity. The reason is simple: people are building playlists. It’s as if an artist were paid every time one of their fans dropped a needle on their record…”

Gerd comments: I love Spotify and certainly hope they can indeed change the way the music industry work - all it will take is approximately $3 billion in VC money ;) November 27, 2012 at 08:09AM

Sirius, for example, pays 8 percent of its revenue to record companies and artists. Pandora pays a fraction of a cent each time a song is streamed, which last year amounted to about 54 percent of its revenue, or $149 million.
“The rate being too high dramatically depresses how much music gets played,” Mr. Westergren said in a recent interview. “It has really suffocated the industry.”

Gerd adds: the music industry loves to choke their golden geese. Pandora should pay a percentage of revenues just like any other radio service, IMHO. November 05, 2012 at 06:34PM

Looks like streaming music is rising fast:

Ben Sisaro via NYTimes.com

Online Radio Audience Climbing: Two recent studies have found that the audience for online radio services like Pandora is rising quickly. A report released Tuesday by Arbitron and the market research firm Edison Research found that 103 million people listened to online radio in the last month and, in a 30 percent jump from last year, 76 million in the last week. A recent report by the NPD Group, another research firm, also found that 43 percent of Web users listen to online radio, while numbers held steady for those listening to music on terrestrial radio (84 percent) and CD’s (74 percent). Both reports were based on listener surveys.