Sometimes it pays to read the transcripts from earnings calls, especially for company’s like Pandora, our latest set of fake “friends” in the tech community.  Always striving to keep their executive salaries high, Pandora’s CEO let their true strategy slip out in yesterday’s earnings call (see the full transcript on Seeking Alpha):

For the landscape around content licensing remains a complex topic. We reached the important milestone related to content cost during Q1, with a decision in the ASCAP trial. In her ruling, Judge Cote, confirmed our longstanding belief that “Pandora is Radio”. An important finding was wide ranging legal implications for our company.

Additionally the court set a rate of 1.85% of Pandora’s revenue for the five years ending December 31, 2015, which was the upper end of our proposed range of rates. And this decision followed the court’s issuance of summary judgment in September 2013…