As businesses, Pandora and Spotify are divorced from music. To me, it’s a short logical step to observe that they are doing nothing for the business of music — except undermining the simple cottage industry of pressing ideas onto vinyl, and selling them for more than they cost to manufacture.Alternative rocker Damon Krukowski • Discussing how his 90s-era bands, Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi, have struggled to make any money of note from Spotify and Pandora. In fact, in the most recent quarter, “Pandora paid a total of $64.17 for use of the entire Galaxie 500 catalogue,” he explains, which splits to roughly 33 cents per song per member for the entire catalog. Krukowski’s in an interesting spot — one where the band he’s best known for has a cult audience, but perhaps not one large enough to sustain a high number of listens. Which is no fun for the band, because they need 47,680 listens on Spotify — or 312,000 plays on Pandora — to earn the equivalent earnings they’d get from one album sale.
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