And it gets even uglier. American radio has a long history of shafting Black artists, especially when it comes to older performers.  Unfortunately, Pandora now seems to be stepping on the wrong side of that very unfortunate history, at least according to the NAACP.  In a letter sent to members of Congress by NAACP Washington bureau director Hilary Shelton, Pandora’s efforts to lower royalties through the Internet Radio Fairness Act (IRFA) is coming at the expense of Black musicians, many of whom depend on these royalty streams.

In other words, Pandora is making the problem worse, even though this a royalty issue shared by all musicians regardless of race.  The letter, first obtained by the New York Times, puts Pandora in a rather sticky corner without stating the obvious.

“Quite frankly, the IRFA bill fails the basic test of economic fairness and discriminates against singers and musicians by slashing the compensation they receive when their work is played over digital online radio.”

This isn’t the PR result intended by founder Tim Westergren, who’s been playing the pro-artist, ‘I’m one of you’ card.  But there’s still a very real issue of survival: Pandora argues that without lowered royalties, its very existence becomes threatened.  And, internet radio as a whole becomes an endangered category, all because of arbitrarily lower rates enjoyed by competing formats like satellite radio.

Sounds reasonable on many levels, though there’s also a very dirty game involving terrestrial broadcast radio here.  And, one Pandora had little control over, and still has little control over in the present.  The reason is that the well-lobbying traditional radio doesn’t pay performance licenses (and hasn’t for a long time), even if older songs are a format staple for a station.

This is exactly the point where the rhetoric of ‘we offer free promotion’ starts to wear thin, simply because listeners already want to hear older classics – and advertisers will pay for those built-in audiences.  There isn’t as much promotional need when it comes to songs like ‘My Girl,’ and without those classics, Oldies formats would quickly be forced to switch to traffic and weather. [DigitalMusicNews]