Pandora|Policy

Publication

Fans’ Embrace of Streaming Sustained Music During a Tumultuous Year. Why, and What Does it Mean for 2021

"The full-fledged consumer embrace of streaming helped avert a total collapse of the music business," writes DiMA President & CEO Garrett Levine in Music Business Worldwide

The music business in 2020 experienced an unprecedented cacophony of events. Live music businesses tragically shuttered. A virtual performance market emerging. Yet despite it all, music lived on through streaming as it continued to be embraced by nearly every American with an Internet connection, even in the face of a global health crisis and massive economic disruption.

This is not the only 2020 storyline in music, but it is certainly one of the more hopeful: the full-fledged consumer embrace of streaming helped avert a total collapse of the music business. As one analyst put it: “streaming remains resilient,” with “music industry revenues [holding up] relatively well compared to other industries during the COVID-19 pandemic. The growth of digital streaming has allowed consumers to access and enjoy music regardless of social distancing restrictions.” …

The 2020 music streaming service is your record store, jukebox, speaker, FM radio station, mp3 collection, MTV, set of liner notes and smart music friend all wrapped together in one captivating experience. And critically, streaming services allow you to access all of that without leaving your home—a vitally important characteristic over the past year…

More than ever, I have grown to appreciate just how connected successes and failures are. Music’s resilience is impressive but not infallible.

We should be wary of rhetoric that essentially suggests burning the village in order to save it, or of proposals that ignore how the fundamental complexity of the business — including the balance of payouts to different rightsholders — contributes to the current economics for creators. Any honest reckoning of our business must examine what happens to the 69 cents of every dollar that digital music services pay to record companies, music publishers, and PROs.

For all of us who are part of the community supporting this artform that helped sustain us through this challenging year, our posture should be one of finding solutions and forging partnerships. That is ultimately the approach that resuscitated the music business from a decade-long decline, produced the durable foundation that helped sustain our community through this tumultuous time, and is one reason for continued optimism in the new year.

Read the full Music Business Worldwide op-ed from DiMA President & CEO Garrett Levine here

Publication

IA Industry Indicators – Q3 2019

Internet Association
Internet Association

This is Internet Association’s fourth IA Internet Indicators (3I) Quarterly Report, which tracks proprietary and unique data on the internet industry. The 3I Quarterly Report is a one-of-a-kind resource for those interested in the internet sector and its impact on the economy.

Publication

IA Industry Indicators – Q2 2019

Internet Association
Internet Association

This is Internet Association’s third IA Internet Indicators (3I) quarterly report, which tracks new and unique data on the internet industry. In this issue, we focus on insights from IA’s digital price index (DPI) which tracks prices for typical internet services and how they compare to the national consumer price index.

Publication

IA Industry Indicators – Q1 2019

Internet Association
Internet Association

This is Internet Association’s second IA Industry Indicators (3I) quarterly report, which tracks new and unique data on the internet industry. In this issue, we focus on the American public’s sentiment toward the internet and provide updates to our standard data tables. The most striking finding this quarter was the consistent rise every quarter of public sentiment toward the internet.

Publication

You can now control Pandora with voice commands

The Verge
Dani Deahl

US-based internet radio company Pandora has announced that it is introducing Voice Mode for mobile, a smart assistant feature similar to Amazon’s Alexa that will allow you to navigate around the app. Using the wake phrase “Hey Pandora” triggers Pandora to listen for a command, so you can use the app hands-free.

Publication

IA Industry Indicators

Internet Association
Internet Association

We need better measures. We need better measures for the internet and other technologies and we need better measures on their impacts on our economy and society. The IA Industry Indicators (3I) Report is a new quarterly report from Internet Association that directly tackles the challenges of the 21st century economy by delivering new insights into America’s most dynamic economic sector – the internet.

Publication

Metro Chamber Annual Meeting: Workforce Key to City’s Global Growth, Local Prosperity

Global Atlanta
Trevor Williams

If there’s one word beyond all the sloganeering that defined the Metro Atlanta Chamber’s annual meeting Thursday, it might be “mirror.” Representatives of a range of companies, from BlackRock to Pandora, intimated on stage that they located in Atlanta partly because it’s an emerging tech hub, but mostly because they could see their culture and their growth ethic reflected here.

Publication

IA Privacy Principles For A Modern National Regulatory Framework

Internet Association
Internet Association

The time is right to modernize our federal rules and develop a national framework for consumer privacy. That framework should be consistent nationwide, proportional, flexible, and should encourage companies to act as good stewards of the personal information provided to them by individuals.
Publication

Towards A Better Understanding Of Internet Economics

Internet Association
Richard Adler

It is all but impossible to miss the signs of the far-reaching impact of the internet: the near-ubiquitousness of mobile phones and other connected devices; the billions of times daily that these devices are checked and the number of hours Americans spend “on screen”; the growth of digital media; the prominent role of social networks in delivering news and connecting people with each other. The internet is also impacting nearly every aspect of business operations, from hiring and sales to logistics and the management of customer relationships to the rise of the internet-fueled “freelance economy.” It sometimes seems as if no aspect of daily life has remained untouched by the digital revolution.

Publication

Every Berklee Career a Startup: Students Explore Silicon Valley over Winter Break

Berklee's Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship
Belinda Huang

This winter break, Berklee’s Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (BerkleeICE) took a group of 20 students from diverse backgrounds and majors to the frontier of innovation and technology during its second annual trip to Silicon Valley. The students were given a view into the careers and creative headspace of leaders who are pioneering the future in companies ranging from startups to industry giants such as Google X, Facebook, Pandora, YouTube, Skywalker Sound, and Sony Interactive Entertainment.