The Trichordist

While Pandora is busy in court suing BMI songwriters for lower rates we thought you’d like to read this guest comment from George Johnson.

“The past 3 years, according to the SEC, Pandora executives and investors extracted over $360 million dollars in “stock compensation”. This new $122 million dollar gravy train for 2015 will put Pandora executives at almost $500 million dollars for themselves in 4 short years while they plead poverty to Congress, Judge Stanton, Judge Cote, and the Copyright Royalty Board. (Ed note: New information suggests it’s closer to $550 million.)

Not bad for a guy who thought of the entire idea for Pandora while “tripping on psychedelic mushrooms”. — see Washington Post in 2013.

It’s time for the SEC, DOJ, or Congress to shut down Pandora with a temporary injunction and have these executives PAYBACK these hundreds of millions of stolen royalty money to songwriters, music…

There they go again!

Pandora is currently suing BMI songwriters for lower rates.  Last year it was ASCAP.  They’ve also been been  sued by  The Turtles for refusing to pay royalties to artists who recorded before 1972.    Pandora’s entire business model seems to be either suing songwriters or artists and trying to set us against each other.

And taking money off investors.

Pandora plans to pay its top executives $122 million in “Stock Compensation” for this year alone.  That’s right, the money-losing Pandora plans on paying executives $122 million in stock this year. Unbelievable.  This is on top of their already inflated Silicon Valley size salaries. No wonder their stock is collapsing. It sure looks like the executives are vampires sucking the company dry.  While pleading poverty to the BMI rate court judge and public.  I don’t understand how these people stay out of jail.

“The Specialist” at Seeking Alpha has carefully…

Senator Mike Lee is presiding over a hearing tomorrow before the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee with the provocative title “How Much For a Song?: The Antitrust Decrees that Govern the Market for Music“.

There are three fundamental questions presented to Senator Lee and the Subcommittee regarding the antitrust decrees that govern two of the three U.S. performing rights organizations.

1.  How Much Longer Will The Government Throttle America’s Innovators?   Whatever the rationale once was for the ASCAP and BMI consent decrees, it is long lost in the dustbin of history.  Let’s be clear–the National Association of Broadcasters, the Digital Media Association, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, the Consumer Electronics Association and their overlapping membership and boards of directors want the Congress to think that this dispute is about “Big Music” versus innovation.

Somehow these companies with combined market capitalizations in excess of $2 trillion, companies including the richest…

It’s common for lawyers to try to defend their poor moral choices in clients by saying, “I was just the lawyer,” kind of like “I was just following orders.”  If you were talking about a criminal defense lawyer or someone who chose to defend a controversial bad guy because everyone is entitled to a defense, that would be one thing.  Particularly if the lawyer was a poorly compensated public defender.  But when you’re talking about someone who takes a job complete with stock options that makes them rich, that “I was just the lawyer” thing is harder to rationalize.

Pandora’s Assistant General Counsel Christopher Harrison not only brings with him the Pandora baggage, but as Billboard reports, he’s seen this movie and he knows how it ends.  In Billboard’s post about the payola issues in Merlin’s direct deal with Pandora we discover some details about Harrison’s past that every…

Pandora’s Publicity Stunt: Pandora bought  South Dakota terrestrial radio station minus the broadcast license.

Back in June of 2013 Pandoras Associate Chief Counsel Chris Harrison (Songwriter Enemy #1) wrote an article for The Hill that implied that Pandora had purchased a radio station in South Dakota. The idea was that they were somehow now equivalent to Clear Channel and deserved the same percentage of revenue deal for sound recordings that Clear Channel receives.  Never mind that much of Clear Channel’s content IS NOT MUSIC and terrestrial broadcast has enormous capital costs so percentages of revenues are not comparable.  THE REAL PROBLEM and why this is misleading is that Pandora did not own the broadcast license of this station.   Transfer of this license requires FCC approval and as far as we can tell it appears Pandora had not even filed for transfer of this license at the time of…

“The sleep of reason produces monsters”-Goya

By the end of 2015 Pandora Executives  and Investors will have sucked nearly 1/2 a billion dollars in “stock compensation” out of the company.  Yet Pandora complains very publicly to the US Congress about being unable to cover royalties to performers and Songwriters. Hence the massive lobbying effort in Washington DC and endless lawsuits against performers and songwriters.  Pandora is currently pleading for lower royalties before the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington DC.

Sen Ron Wyden the hand puppet of webcasters and broadcasters (and our vote for Manchurian Candidate) even repeated this crap when he announced the Pandora/broadcaster backed Internet Radio Fairness Act.

“Senator Wyden is introducing the Internet Radio Fairness Act (S.3609) to remove the regulatory shackles preventing Internet radio from being commercially viable” (italics added for emphasis).

But this is not true.  The interactive radio monopoly Pandora is not profitable simply because…

First I bet you didn’t know that US Government sets the prices for many uses of songs and recordings?  What? Are you telling me that in 2015 there is not a technologically feasible way to let the free market set the price of songs and recordings for broadcast, webcasting and streaming?   Bat-shit crazy ain’t it?

Well if you consider that some of the largest most politically powerful corporations benefit from this process it makes a little more sense.  I’ll name just two: Clear Channel and Google. Pay to play government at its finest.

Before you accuse me of pie-ism (arguing over who gets how much songwriters or performers get of the paltry and shrinking pie) I am not. I’m simply pointing out how irrational it is to have the government setting prices in this day and age.   It is not even clear that the process is constitutional as much…

What follows are the comments I submitted to the DOJ against the  ASCAP/BMI consent decrees. You have until the end of the day today to submit comments.  http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/ascap-bmi-decree-review.html

The Consent Decrees Violate Individual Rights.

I am an American songwriter, a member of BMI and a member of the bands Cracker and Camper van Beethoven. I’m submitting this comment on my own behalf in opposition to the ASCAP and BMI consent decrees. I believe these government actions essentially are a compulsory license outside of the Congress and take away songwriters’ rights to due process of law.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that Justice Department consent decrees in general are oppressive. I am saying that the way these particular consent decrees operate is oppressive to songwriters. That operation is oppressive because of the extremely long period of time they have been in effect, because they take away…

As the guardian reported last week, a high ranking Google Executive has taken a seat on Spotify’s Board. This weekend we learned that the Google/YouTube’s Shiva Rajaraman is moving from YouTube to Spotify.  Rajaraman was part of the team launching YouTube’s music subscription service that would compete with Spotify.   While it is quite common for technology executives (and entertainment executives)  to move from one company to another, and for one company to have a seat on the board of another company, the fact that both of these companies are involved in licensing songs and recordings should raise concerns with The DOJ. Why?  Because it makes a mockery of the consent decrees that govern songwriters in their negotiations with these services. Because in effect the consent decrees are now backwards. There is a very real possibility of collusion and anti-competitive behavior from the services. (some would argue it’s already…