Pandora’s future in delicate balance

As a follow up to the Pandora-related article published on CDFreaks earlier, we again chatted with Pandora founder Tim Westergren, who cleared up some more details regarding Pandora and its future.

Music listeners have been curious about Pandora’s fate for a few months now, with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Pandora attempting to figure out a fair royalty rate for both sides.  The main problem, of course, is that Pandora and the RIAA have "very different ideas" about what is fair.  The RIAA and other music trade groups recently came to an agreement with Internet radio broadcasters, but only sites such as Napster To Go, Rhapsody and imeem.com were included in the agreement.

However, legislation to help give both sides of the Pandora feud more time to reach an agreement, H.R. 7084, is supported by both sides, but is facing stiff competition from the National Association of Broadcasters. 

"This reflects the progress we’ve made in negotiating, and the collective sense of optimism about finally reaching a compromised solution.  H.R. 7084 gives us the time and the legislative tools to see the process through to its conclusion."

The RIAA, Digital Media Organization (DiMA), SoundExchange, with the help of Congressman Jay Inslee, are in favor of offering more time for an agreement to be ironed out.  In the article published earlier on CDFreaks, Westergren called on Pandora users to call their congressperson to plead for their support of H.R. 7084.

Assuming H.R. 7084 is shot out of the air by Congress, Westergren does not have an optimistic future for Pandora and other webcasters.

"Internet radio will become just another pipeline for Top 40 programming broadcasters move in with their dotcom webstreams to replace the webcasters they’ve just forced out of business," he told CDFreaks.

While Congress is busy trying to figure out how to handle the national bank bailout this weekend, Monday could very well prove to be "D-Day" for Internet radio, Westergren told us.

"More than anything, I want citizens to realize that these are the moments where their action, or inaction, has enormous importance.  Music fans are the only ones standing between webcasters and the abyss.  If they value the diversity and control they get from sites like Pandora, they’ve got to be willing to stand up and fight for it.  And if they do, their voices really can make a difference.  We know because we did it once already."