What you're failing to realize is that the per-stream fee that Pandora pays is exclusive to net broadcasters. Everyone else pays a percentage of revenue that i

What you're failing to realize is that the per-stream fee that Pandora pays is exclusive to net broadcasters. Everyone else pays a percentage of revenue that is a manageable 7-8% for performance fees, and another 5.5% for publishing. Pandora's highly risky, per-stream fee is a number pulled from the asses of the RIAA and has no basis in the reality of what the music might be worth in advertiser dollars. Why is $0.002 a fair price to pay each time you play a song? Where did that number come from? Why would Pandora pay this, but Sirius not? When the largest, most efficient net broadcaster, after 11 years and over $300M in projected 2012 revenue, cannot optimize their way out of a -14% margin, what mathematical justification is there for this $0.002 figure? The number is supposed to be based on a "willing seller, willing buyer" calculation based on the market rate of what companies are willing to pay, and yet the only rates that were allowed into these discussions were the mandated rates by the copyright royalty board - not the rates that independent labels might offer, or the companies that had royalty-free agreements, like ours (www.earbits.com). You will be hard pressed to find a person more pro-artist than me, but the per-stream rate of $0.002 makes zero sense, if a per-stream rate makes any sense at all. Asking for neutrality across platforms seems more than fair. The real reason the labels don't want to budge with Pandora is simple. The royalties go to SoundExchange, and then get distributed directly to artists - most of them unrecouped by their record labels. Labels want to destroy anybody whose royalties don't go through their accounting department, where they can file them away under unrecouped and keep every penny the artists deserve. That is the real reason for this battle.