Terrestrial Radio Pays Roughly 28% More To Publishers Per Play, Per Listener Than Pandora, According

Terrestrial radio pays roughly 28% more to publishers per play, per listener than Pandora, according to Billboard estimates from numbers provided in blog posts by David Lowery and Jay Frank. But publishing is a small part of Pandora's royalties. When payments TO all parties (publishers, record labels, performing artists) are taken into account, Pandora's per-play, per-listener royalty is over 14 times that of terrestrial radio.    Lowery's blog post about BMI royalties from radio and Pandora for his song "Low" has gained incredible attention (and 145 comments to date) for its detail and criticism (of Pandora's efforts to reduce what it pays publishers, labels and artists). Frank's follow-up post at his FutureHit.DNA blog includes audience data from Mediabase that allows for an apples-to-apples comparison.    "Low" received $6,888.90 for 18,797 terrestrial radio plays and $84.45 for 1.159 million Pandora plays. (Both figures cover total payments to BMI. Lowery has a 40% writer's share. I assume the publisher takes a 50% share of royalties.) Since many people hear terrestrial radio plays but -- most likely -- only one person hears a Pandora play, it's difficult to compare $6,888.90 and $84.45.

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Digital tracks sales are on the decline and the trend is accelerating.

For the year to date as of June 30, digital track sales have declined 2.3% to 682.2 million units from the 698 million units that tracks scanned in the first half of 2012, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

In the first quarter, track sales declined 1.34% to 356.5 million from the 361.3 million. In the second quarter the decline more than doubled to 3.3%, with track sales totaling 325.7 million units this year versus 336.7 million in the second quarter of 2012.

At mid-year, 51 songs had scanned more than 1 million units. Thirteen of them scanned two million units or more, led by the 5.6 million units garnered by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ "Thrift Shop" (featuring Wanz).

Last year, two titles accomplished the feat of scanning more than five million units -- Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" (featuring Kimbra) and Fun's "We Are Young" (featuring Janelle Monae). A total of 47 titles hit the 1 million unit mark, of which 13 were more than million scans.

So far, Justin Timberlake's "The 20/20 Experience" is the best-selling album with 2.04 million scans. It is in fact, the only million-seller as Bruno Mars "Unorthodox Jukebox" -- with scans at 985,000 units -- looks like it will need another week to break the million-unit milestone. Last year, only one album had scanned more than 1 million units -- Adele's "21," which had scanned 3.7 million units.

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Oh, good morning…just wanted to let you know…

Virgin Mobile #FREEFEST presented by Samsung IS BACK!

Show on Wednesday! Who’s coming? Hit me up for tickets

                                 The city selected a new operator for the troubled Lincoln Theatre back in April, and now, finally, we know who it is. I.M.P. Productions, the company that owns the 9:30 Club and books Merriweather Post Pavilion, will take over booking at the U Street NW venue beginning in September, the mayor's office announced this afternoon.

The Lincoln, a historic music venue and former movie house, is owned by the city, which took direct control of the theater's operations in 2012 following years of shaky finances and inconsistent booking by a nonprofit. While it's been run by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, not much has gone on at the Lincoln, but the agency has been pursuing a for-profit operator for the venue since December.

I.M.P. has booked shows at the 1,225-seat theater before, including sold-out stands by Jeff Tweedy in 2010 and Jeff Mangum in 2012. I.M.P. chair Seth Hurwitz wasn't available to talk this afternoon—he's on an airplane, he says in an email—but says this in the press release:

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There are many examples of the benefits of working in harmony with nature. When first venturing out beyond home a child is taught to walk with traffic. A carpenter achieves a cleaner result by going with the grain rather than against it. In sports a team succeeds by taking advantage of what the defense gives them, and there are countless other examples that express why it is better to work with the flow rather than push against it.  For the past ten years the recorded music industry has ignored this strategy, and stubbornly clung to a business model that is no longer in harmony with they way people consume music by predominantly releasing albums in a single song economy.

According to Nielsen Soundscan, in 2011 there were 1.374 billion digital transactions last year. Of those only 103 million or 7.5 % were for albums. This means that approximately 1 out of 14 times a consumer went to buy music online last year they were purchased an album. First with Napster and MP3s, then iTunes and the iPod, and now with streaming services like Spotify and Turntable.fm–the music consumer has repeatedly demonstrated that they prefer single songs to albums. Despite this fact, nearly 77,000 albums were released last year.

Rather than change strategy to work with this reality, most people in the industry just complained that it wasn’t fair, and continued the status quo.  I believe there are several reasons for this.  The first reason is that labels believe they can make more money selling albums. The second, is that marketing and sales processes were built for the album system and that makes it difficult to change. The last reason is because artists believe they are supposed to make albums either as a musical statement or as validation of their professional status.

This essay will attempt to prove that all three of those reasons are not necessarily true, and that selling single songs can be better promotionally, artistically and financially for artists and labels.

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