Pharrell made less than $3,000 from 43M Pandora streams of “Happy” | Hacker News Reader

Pharrell made less than $3,000 from 43M Pandora streams of “Happy”

fusion.net

13 pointschirau5 comments

Wow, that's not much of a payout.

I do see pandora as different from spotify, though. It's more a replacement for radio than purchased music.

It's not easy to listen to Pharrell's "happy" immediately on pandora like I could if I owned the track. I'd have to create a station, and keep clicking until I get the song, with advertisements along the way. I might hit the max number of songs allowed per hour, at which point I could create a new station and do the same thing. Eventually, I would get the song, probably within 15-20 minutes?

On spotify, I would be able to bring the song up immediately and listen to it, just as if I owned the track on iTunes or had purchased a hard copy. There are ads unless you use the paid service, but they usually don't kick in until you've already listened a bit.

Pandora tends to be more of a discovery service for me - I have found out about and purchased music I heard first on Pandora, similar to radio.

What I want to know is how much he would make for the same number of plays from traditional radio stations. Pandora is, in essence, a radio station. You cannot play a specific song, or restart the song, just like a broadcast station.

How much did he make from that song being heard by 43M people on the radio?

I think that's the real question. In an era where alot of people do not listen to traditional radio, a service like pandora helps artists get heard by people who did not go specifically looking to listen to 'Happy'. if even 10 percent of listeners heard the song first from pandora, that's 4.3 million potential new fans who buy CD's or tracks from iTunes and PlayStore. Unless Pharel is living in a van down by the river, he should be thanking the stars he wrote a hit that got listened to by 43 million times on a single service alone.

And how much did he make from touring and merchandise resulting from people hearing his songs on Pandora?

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