Pandora wants you to know that Pandora is good for music because it pays artists millions and millions of dollars for their songs. Take Drake and Lil Wayne, they get nearly $3 million each a year. And Pandora wants to pay them more.
According to Pandora CEO Tim Westergren, Pandora will pay over two thousand artists $10,000 each over the next 12 months. Yeah it’s not a milli a milli for every artist but that’s still a solid chunk of change! The top dogs in music obviously get a lot of money:
Drake – $3 million
Lil Wayne – $3 million
Coldplay – $1 million
Adele – $1 million
Wiz Khalifa – $1 million
Jason Aldean – $1 million
Rascal Flatts – $670,351
Ellie Goulding – $609,046
Zac Brown Band – $547,064
Mumford & Sons – $523,902
Iron & Wine – $173,152
Bon Iver – $135,223
George Winston – $85,239
The Four Tops – $65,173
But lesser known artists are getting paid too. Artists I’ve never heard of like Donnie McClurkin, French Montana or Grupo Bryndis (who rank 4,752, 17,000 and 183,187, respectively on Amazon) are each collecting $100,000-$138,000 a year from Pandora. Pandora is happy to pay these ‘performance fees’ to artists but the RIAA and Congress keep trying to make it harder for internet radio stations to succeed. Sigh. Artists getting paid good money for their own music would be something the awful RIAA would be against. [Pandora via Business Insider]
