Pandora Reveals How Much It Pays Artists: Drake Makes …

by Nate Wooley | October 11, 2012 10:54 am

Pandora (NYSE:P[1]) founder and CEO Tim Westergren is concerned about how much his firm is paying artists.

Westergren noted in a recent blog post[2] that high royalty rates for Internet radio is making it hard for his service to be competitive with other forms of music consumption. Pandora and other Internet radio companies pay more than 50% of their revenue to artists[3] while Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ:SIRI[4]) pays less than 10%. Westergren is backing the Internet Radio Fairness Act of 2012 to level the royalty playing field.

Westergren said that, over the next year, Pandora will pay 2,000-plus artists more than $10,000 each. In some cases, artists like Coldplay and Drake are bringing in seven-digit figures.

Here’s a look at some payouts based on Westergren’s blog:

• Drake: Hip Hop, roughly $3 million
• Lil Wayne: Hip Hop, roughly $3 million
• Adele: Singer/Songwriter, $1 million+
• Jason Aldean: Country, $1 million+
• Coldplay: Rock, $1 million+
• Rascal Flatts: Country, $670,351
• Ellie Goulding: Singer/Songwriter, $609,046
• Grupo Bryndis: Latin, $114,192
• Donnie McClurkin: Gospel, $100,228
• Iron & Wine: Indie, $173,152
• Bon Iver: Folk, $135,223
• George Winston: Jazz, $85,239
• The Four Tops: Soul, $65,173

More on Radio:

• The Universal-EMI Merger: No Biggie[5]
• Pandora Turns Up the Volume[6]
• Why Sirius is Worth Tuning Into[7]

Source URL: https://investorplace.com/2012/10/pandora-reveals-how-much-it-pays-artists-drake-makes/

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