4 ms·

I'd like to see a comparison of royalty models between streaming services (Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, iTunes Match/Radio) as well as how it compares to buying a ph

• tunesmith 13y ago
  There are a ton of comparison charts out there... one thing to keep in mind is that a service like Pandora is completely different than a service like Spotify. Different royalty rates, different implications. It comes down to the fact that on Pandora, you can't request particular songs. For that reason, artists don't tend to mind Pandora too much, since any royalty income they get from Pandora is basically gravy. It doesn't really rob album sales. You could argue that it robs radio play (since radio is less popular now), leading to lower royalties that way, but it's a different beast than Spotify. For Spotify, a person can request a certain artist/song and listen to the stream, without buying the track/album. It robs album/download sales, and it's debatable (to put it charitably) whether the "music discovery" benefit makes up for that loss.