Pandora CEO claims free, on-demand music is what’s killing the music industry

Pandora’s CEO has a pretty brutal opinion about free, on-demand music streaming from the likes of Spotify and YouTube, and it echoes what big music labels have been saying; free music is killing the industry. By making music “free” it devalues the art and makes it hard too difficult for artists to continue to thrive.

It’s an old-school line of thinking that uses terrestrial radio as a reference point, and it’s exactly the kind of mentality Pandora needs if it wants to buddy up with those giant music labels that still have a lot of clout when it comes to who gets access to what music. Pandora wants to bring back an older model of music, where you listened to songs on the radio to discover new music, then went out and bought the album if you wanted to hear more of a band.

This would play into Pandora’s new business model that they’re planning, with a free-tier internet radio service and a paid, on-demand streaming service, but it’s moving against the grain of where the internet and the music industry is heading, whether Pandora and record labels like it or not.

The music industry is in a weird position, because its business model has been completely turned upside down thanks to the internet, and most record labels have been slow to adapt. But trying to force things to go back to how they were in the 1990’s isn’t a good solution, and Pandora is probably going to find that out.

source: Business Insider

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