Artists can opt out of ASCAP and Pandora arrangements if they like and negotiate whatever rates they want. ASCAP and BMI formed a cartel in the 1940s to try to

Artists can opt out of ASCAP and Pandora arrangements if they like and negotiate whatever rates they want. ASCAP and BMI formed a cartel in the 1940s to try to drive up prices by crushing alternative composers of music and driving them out of business. They succeeded and had to be brought under the anti-monopoly laws. Their legal troubles led to setting the official prices that Pandora pays. It wasn't a free market when ASCAP was abusing it so the market arguably wasn't perfectly capable of working things out. I suspect that the market is capable today with our more open society and less cartel power from music publishers. We'll find out if the market can handle things when independent artists abandon ASCAP for better royalty rates, if they ever do.