A few days ago, I posted the news that Pandora is closing in the UK. Part of the reasons given were…

Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate

Well, so Pandora say. But they’re just saying that, aren’t they… of course they’ll claim the figures are “far too high”. That’s part of standard negotiation. Right?

Well, let’s do a little maths.

(## Updated, following Paul Brown’s comment lower down // and linked to MCPS/PRS).

Paidcontent.co.uk reports that MCPS/PRS was asking for 0.085p per song per listener - which also appears on this PDF file on the MCPS/PRS website. PPL, in a press release about the Pandora closure, says they would charge 0.0561p 0.0773p per song per listener (the interactive radio rate). Pandora plays around 15 songs per hour.

MCPS/PRS: 15 x 0.085p = 1.275p per listener, per hour
+ PPL: 15 x 0.0773p = 1.159p per listener, per hour
Total music rights payments: 2.434p per listener, per hour.

Now, consider this.

The latest figures from the UK’s Radio Advertising Bureau says that the commercial radio sector as a whole brought in £593m in 2007. The latest RAJAR figures show that commercial radio is listened-to for 441m total hours every week, or alternatively 23,018m total hours a year.

So… 23,018m total hours brings in £593m. Divide one by the other, and we find that, as a total industry average, commercial radio makes 2.57p per listener, per hour. And the revenue figures also include non-radio activity, like websites.

Let’s reiterate:
- The entire commercial radio industry in the UK, after 35 years experience and with 31 million weekly listeners, far outstripping even Google’s online reach, makes 2.57p per listener, per hour.
- For online radio, the UK music industry want rates that are 2.434p per listener, per hour.

Pandora would still have to pay their staff and their streaming costs; but once the music industry have taken 94% of their revenue, it’s a bit hard to understand where they’d find the money…

So, in short, it would clearly appear that these rates really are “far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate”.

Photo: Rossina Bossio Bossa. Used under licence. These are my personal views, and not those of the BBC.

Tim Westergren (above) has just sent this email to all users of Pandora in the UK.

I really liked Pandora; and it’s admirable that they are shuttering their service because they can’t achieve a licence, rather than just doing it anyway. It’s disappointing, but the right ethical thing to do. I’ve met Tim Westergren: he’s a very decent bloke. I’ve also met, on a number of occasions, Pandora’s UK MD, Paul Brown. He’s a very decent bloke too. Shame that the record companies just don’t want to know.

The bold bits are my highlights. (You may also like this post).

This is an email I hoped I would never have to send.

As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.

It continues to astound me and the rest of the team here that the industry is not working more constructively to support the growth of services that introduce listeners to new music and that are totally supportive of paying fair royalties to the creators of music. I don’t often say such things, but the course being charted by the labels and publishers and their representative organizations is nothing short of disastrous for artists whom they purport to represent - and by that I mean both well known and indie artists. The only consequence of failing to support companies like Pandora that are attempting to build a sustainable radio business for the future will be the continued explosion of piracy, the continued constriction of opportunities for working musicians, and a worsening drought of new music for fans. As a former working musician myself, I find it very troubling.

We have been told to sign these totally unworkable license rates or switch off, non-negotiable…so that is what we are doing. Streaming illegally is just not in our DNA, and we have to take the threats of legal action seriously. Lest you think this is solely an international problem, you should know that we are also fighting for our survival here in the US, in the face of a crushing increase in web radio royalty rates, which if left unchanged, would mean the end of Pandora.

We know what an epicenter of musical creativity and fan support the UK has always been, which makes the prospect of not being able to launch there and having to block our first listeners all the more upsetting for us.

We know there is a lot of support from listeners and artists in the UK for Pandora and remain hopeful that at some point we’ll get beyond this. We’re going to keep fighting for a fair and workable rate structure that will allow us to bring Pandora back to you. We’ll be sure to let you know if Pandora becomes available in the UK. There may well come a day when we need to make a direct appeal for your support to move for governmental intervention as we have in the US. In the meantime, we have no choice but to turn off service to the UK.

Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008.

Again, on behalf of all of us at Pandora, I’m very, very sorry.

Photo: Steven Toomey. Used under licence

Photo taken this week by mike138. Used under licence. Photos for my Delicious postings like this will be taken from Flickr’s ‘interesting feed’ for the day concerned. Seemed like a good idea.

Postalicious
One of the reasons I stopped posting my Del.icio.us links to this blog was the unpleasant way that it rendered, and the lack of any control I had with regard to timing. This hopefully fixes this.

Meet Mr. TechCrunch UK - ScobleShow
In the latest of my “let’s mention Robert Scoble because he normally adds your mention to his linkblog”, a serious one - Robert interviews the excellent Mike Butcher, who’s looking very well in this video. I last saw Mike a good eight months ago.

Ubuntu
Recently added it to my normal workhorse laptop (an HP Compaq tc4200). I wouldn’t say it worked totally instantly out of the box, but after a little tinkering, it’s doing everything I want except print, which is a good start, and I’ve still Windows on the machine if I need it.

The UCC Journalism Society Conference 2008 (my speaking events)
Delighted to be speaking on “the place of traditional media in the Web 2.0 world” at this conference for University College Cork: under the auspices of my Media UK work.

An ego blog-search
I wanted to see who was blogging about me, but I had problems with Google Blog Search returning my own blog entries. I’ve worked out how to stop that with -blogurl, like so: “James Cridland” -blogurl:james.cridland.net -blogurl:www.flickr.com

v-moda “Vibe Duo” headphones for the iPhone
My Christmas present to myself was an iPhone: and these are just excellent headphones - way better sound than the original crappy ones, and with a headset mike, so I can still use it as a phone. Mind, damn expensive.

ShinyRed - 10 blogs to read in 2008
Nine blogs you might actually want to read; and one ridiculous suggestion. But it’s very nice of them, so thank you, ShinyRed.

Prompted by Martin Belam’s list, and to avoid the utter boredom of reinstalling OSX now that my Mac Mini’s internal hard drive has given up the ghost a day before Christmas, here’s my top ten blog posts of 2007, thanks to Google Analytics.

I don’t get nearly the number of readers that Martin gets, and interestingly my recent appearances on the BBC Internet Blog (and links from it) haven’t altered my blog traffic significantly. In fact, most of the traffic to james.cridland.net has been related to a BBC Backstage gadget I’ve written, bringing feeds of BBC Weather to iGoogle. But, here’s the most-read blogs.

1. Fantastists and lazy journalists
Back in March, I looked at a story that the press failed to adequately check before printing, while I checked on it by, um, typing things into Google. I don’t comment on this story any more, and almost feel wrong even linking to it, but it’s clear that others still find it interesting. I wish Ryan and his family all the best.

2. When a perfectly valid credit card won’t work
Highly confusing, this one. This is just a rant, in January, against a credit card (one I don’t have any more, I think), but has clearly caught some search-engine love.

3. iPlayer on GNU/Linux
Welcome news about the BBC iPlayer, with a screenshot from the Ubuntu box in the kitchen. Oly posted in 12 December, but the third most popular posting of the entire year.

4. Review of the O2 XDA Mini S
A review of one of the most hateful phones I’ve ever had the misfortune to have to own. Curiously, my idea (held within this post) of how wifi should work on mobile phones is entirely how the Apple iPhone works. Interesting, too, how much of what I say is fixed with the iPhone.

5. I move to the BBC
My announcement from May, which many linked to. This posting has the record for the amount of comments on this little blog - 37 comments to one post. I ended up leaving Virgin at the end of June, and starting at the BBC on 9 July.

6. DAB+ in the UK
From March, a posting which appears quite high in a search for “DAB Plus” apparently; berating WorldDMB’s Quentin Howard for saying DAB+ would “never come to the UK”. He was wrong then, and while there are still no plans for any DAB+ broadcasting in the UK, he’s still wrong now.

7. How to auto-fill your iPod and train it for better music
From January. I mean to write a follow-up; but sadly have lost my iTunes library thanks to a failed hard-drive today, including all my information about the songs I like. Sigh. Will have to listen to lots more music, then.

8. Channel 4 and DAB Digital Radio
From March: an enthusiastic post about the (winning) Channel 4 bid for the second DAB multiplex. I wonder how many of the promised services will actually make it on-air? Virgin Radio Viva’s certainly not there… and it had a nice logo, too…

9. The Apple TV versus the Sony PSP
A long blog entry from March, essentially saying that if you allow people to hack your products, they’ll sell more. The Apple TV has, of course, sunk without trace; while the Sony PSP has lived to see another day.

10. iGoogle BBC Weather gadget
The source of most traffic to james.cridland.net these days. Bizarrely, Hereford appears to be the most popular place that people want their weather for.

11. Pandora - available to the US only? Or not
A rant about Pandora (who don’t pay PRS/MCPS and PPL licences) still being available in the UK.

12. talkSPORT nicks my little UK flag
…and I’m happy. This blog posting made me add the flag to all my sites again. Ah.

13. DAB audio quality from Ofcom
94% of people say that DAB audio quality is just as good if not better than FM. Worth a blog post.

14. Sky Anytime
I discover this catchup service on my Sky box. Seems to me that we’ll be much better services by proper IP-delivered catchup services. BBC iPlayer seems to fit the bill rather better these days.

15. The story of last.fm
To coincide with their sale to CBS, I witter on about how they don’t pay any licences to the music collection agencies, and just went ahead and made a business (while PPL, MCPS/PRS just stood around and did nothing). Nothing has changed.

16. DAB Slideshow
A photograph of the UK’s first DAB Slideshow services. The BBC has since added some slideshow services, but I don’t own a radio capable of decoding them.

17. Facebook - goodness, it’s good
I discover Facebook. In May of this year. And it’s quite good.

18. Getting rid of out-of-office replies in Gmail
Quite a few rules to rid yourself, mainly, of out-of-office replies. This post needs updating.

19. Logitech Harmony review
A long-term review of a remote control. No, seriously, it’s in the top 20.

20. Google Charts with PHP
Only posted in December, this is announcing a free mostly-port of some Google JavaScript code (which does the same job in PHP). The power of open-source strikes again.

Might I wish you a happy and safe Christmas.

Photo: Stuart Meldrum. Used under licence.

Frazier Chorus was a pop group from Brighton, England. A pop group without a drummer, bassist or guitarist, they unusually instead utilised flute, clarinet, bongos and hush-hush vocals. - Wikipedia

For some reason, this evening I remembered this band, who sang a song called “Dream Kitchen” in 1989, reaching, golly, number 57 in the hit parade. They released one album, called Sue, which, on reflection, I’d quite like to buy (since I’m one of those odd people who like buying albums, rather than singles).

The album came out on Virgin Records, who are owned by EMI. EMI have a contract with iTunes, but unfortunately, that clearly doesn’t extend to the long-tail of content in the back catalogue, so it’s nowhere to buy on iTunes (and thus, in my experience, nowhere to buy on any other download store, so I’ve not bothered, particularly as I have an iPod). Amazon.co.uk wants to relieve me of £43.96, and that’s for a used copy, so nothing would go to the band even if I was mad enough to buy it at that price.

The “illegal”/”legal” mp3sparks.com to the rescue: downloading the entire album for $1.88 (a DRM-free AAC file at 192k). Nothing’ll go to the band this way either, of course (mp3sparks.com claims different, naturally): but when the record company makes it impossible to buy stuff in their back catalogue, what else should I do?

(Any of Frazier Chorus who read this, do get in touch, and I’ll send you a cheque or something.)

Photo: Kasper Sorensen. Used under licence

There’s a well-worn cycle with tech toys.

- You think they’re bloody great for the first few days.
- You convince yourself that despite the drawbacks you’ve found with the product, it’s still a jolly good buy.
- A few weeks later, you discover the full potential of the device with some odd workarounds that take quite some time to do, but make your product do some really cool things.
- A week later, you work out how to automate most of the workaround, which makes you feel even cleverer.
- A few weeks later, you stop doing the ridiculous workarounds because they take far too long to wait for the automation to work.
- A month later, you consign the product to a drawer.
- Six months later, you discover the product again and get all excited.
- Six months and one day later, you realise exactly how much of a crock of shit it is, and throw it back in the drawer.
- A year later, you sell it on eBay for a fraction of the cost you initially spent.

This is generally my cycle.

I’ve spent probably many hundreds of pounds on tech toys that I thought would be great but the dim reality dawns once I play with them. Nevertheless, half the fun is hacking these tech toys to do what you want.

An Intel MP3 player, that required an arcane piece of software to be run every time I wanted to put some music on it, and for me to sit and wait as it slowly transferred over USB1. No podcasts at the time, but plenty of free content broadcast over the air on DAB Digital Radio, for which I had a computer-based tuner which allowed me to take the bitstream, then manually re-encode it into MP3 (since MP2 wasn’t supported), and then allowed me to manually copy it over.

A Compaq iPAQ, USB TV tuner, Sky+ and Windows Media Encoder combo that would, once I’d programmed it carefully using a DOS batch file and co-ordinated hitting buttons on the laptop and the Sky remote, record those programmes I’d flagged in Sky+, encode them into Windows Media format and copy them onto the SD card which I could then the next morning take and place into my iPAQ which would then allow me to watch the programme I’d recorded on the tube.

Similarly, a USB-based DAB tuner which I managed to get networked on a Bluetooth connection to my iPAQ, allowing me to listen to (and control) DAB Digital Radio in any room in the house. Before I realised that it was infinitely easier to get a DAB Digital Radio.

Anyway, this is an awfully long preamble to saying, quite simply, I’m only on the first point with my iPod Touch. I still think it’s bloody great.

Now, true - I’ve “jailbroken” it, so now I have a ton more applications on it. VNC allows me to control the machine over there that’s playing music. I also have the Mobile Mail application (and the maps application) which should be on the iPhone; and it works perfectly when it sees a wifi connection - checking and uploading my email automatically. The ‘terminal’ application, which allows a full Unix session, is pretty cool to show off with (though moderately useless otherwise).

But I’m using it as I did my iPod Nano - automatically filling it and training it to play me great music, as well as getting some great video podcasts, like the aforementioned Mahalo Daily (if I mention it again, maybe Jason Calcanis will pop back and make another nice comment), the slightly surreal Tiki Bar TV, and the always excellent Onion News Network, a delicious pastiche of network news.

It is also, as mentioned earlier, an excellent web tablet - not least because websites have done such a good job of reformatting their content to work with the device. From Facebook, to BBC News (they’ve done some nice tweaks recently, I note), to Google Reader - content owners are taking notice of this little device. (Visit this website on your iPod Touch or your iPhone and you’ll notice that I could hardly resist myself.)

If you’re looking for a good Christmas present - perhaps even for yourself - you can’t go far wrong.

Photo: my colleague Dan Taylor. Used under licence.

Picks from my Del.icio.us links, except looking halfway decent:

Apparently, DRM is dead, evidenced by a statement that “7Digital says DRM-free music sales now outnumber DRM-enabled music 4-to-1.” Meanwhile, shhhh, but illegal peer-to-peer downloads have a positive effect. “Our analysis of the Canadian P2P file-sharing subpopulation suggests that there is a strong positive relationship between P2P file-sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file-sharing increases CD purchasing.”

Wowsers. A wind-up MP3 player. All the better for playing BBC’s podcasts (now including music). If only they’d do a wind-up video player, I could use it for the really rather excellent Channel Flip range of video podcasts. (Yay! British video podcasts! Well-made! Excellently done! Yay!) Also, highly recommended, Mahalo Daily, where Veronica Belmont shows that online video shows needn’t be formulaic, can be produced with good production values, and with humour (even though they’ll spell it ‘humor’, incorrectly). So, so much better than Robert Scoble’s long yawnfests.

Talking about humour, if you’re going to put your content behind a registration wall, at least be careful about how much of the story you give away…

Photo: Stefan. Used under licence.