Dave Lowery is Still Mad At Pandora

This isn't particularly new - Lowery has been after Pandora for a while. The commenters on his blog have already taken him to task for a couple obfuscations - one being that he's obscuring the role of BMI in these low rates and another being that he's complaining about low rates paid to songwriters, while failing to mention that Pandora is also paying other royalties such as to the music's publishers. Lowery gets some of those revenues, and he doesn't appear to be angry at BMI for its role in setting up the royalty structures.

Unfortunately, this ranting back and forth is that Lowery has a valid challenge in his post: why isn't Pandora evolving its business model? (I asked a similar question last November.) Lowery compares Pandora's subscription-focused revenue model with few advertisements with the funding Sirius XM is trying to raise by selling much more advertising time as well as having mandatory subscription fees. Lowery doesn't note (but should have) that Sirius has taken significant steps to start business partnerships with companies like auto makers.

Regardless of the details, it's still a significant and fair critique that Pandora is choosing to work on trying to get rate structure changes while it does not appear to be evolving its business model or branching out its revenue sources. Regardless of how much money you think ought to go to Lowery and others, it's crucial for the survival of online streaming services that we see innovative and diligent work on creating profitable new business models.