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Point is, you're wrong. Those aren't fully socialist societies.

I think he was trying to make the point they were founded on purely socialist ideals (Communist manifesto). However human corruption led to this not being the case.

I don't believe a large socialist society will ever exist on a large scale. Humans are inherently too greedy for this to take place.
 
Nothing is free. They have to find a way to make money from the service or they will die!

Whether it is subscription, app fee, or ads between songs just like regular radio it must happen to survive.

They do not own the content.

Pandora was making money on song purchases and was turning a profit (I believe). With the song fees this is no longer the case.
 
The Soviet Union was never really socialist. How to tell? When leaders are rich and the people are poor. In an ideal socialist society, everyone is equal. In a perfect world, socialism would be a better choice than capitalism. Not the best choice, but a better choice. (Example: ideal capitalism allows people to starve, while ideal socialism supports everybody). The "People's Republic" of China is a dictatorship, with a mix of socialist and capitalist ideas added in. Most people don't realize how capitalist China is. I don't know a lot about Korea.

Point is, you're wrong. Those aren't fully socialist societies.

There is no such thing as a "fully socialist" society; there has never been a single incidence of "ideal socialism." China is not a dictatorship so much as it is an oligarchy claiming to be a people's socialist government. Same with Korea. Most, if not all, of their "capitalist" enterprises are government-owned, controlled and funded. That's not capitalism.

Socialism doesn't work. It never has and it never will because, ideally, it strives to make sure everyone gets an equal share of everything without taking into account how hard one person works relative to another. People don't work that way. Some want to work harder to get ahead, some want to grab power, some want to be spoon-fed. Socialism, despite its good intentions, always breaks down into totalitarianism followed by revolution.

Who are you arguing with?

IgnatiusTheKing would call paying a dollar more for a coffee "socialism", or getting dumped by his girlfriend "socialism".

He probably calls his zits "Mao" and his hemorrhoids "Stalin".

Asinine. Nowhere did I say I was unwilling to pay for things. I simply pointed out that the increasingly socialist federal government in this country is once again putting it's giant beak where it doesn't belong, hurting business and consumers in the end.

If you don't have anything intelligent to ad, try not posting next time.
 
This is another example of the record companies being incredibly shortsighted. Yes there are high quality streams going out, but I have DISCOVERED and PURCHASED a ton of music that I only would have found because of Pandora.
 
you know i suport buying songs for itunes and all that before itunes came out i downloaded all my songs etc but when the Greedy SOBS that is the RIAA does crap like this makes me wanna continue downloading more mp3s via other ways like bittorend limewire etc
 
Thank god AOL Radio now streams its music stations over EDGE and 3G. They have a good selection that Pandora can't run, like comedy stations and many DJ remixes.
 
Pandora is not shutting down

I have lots of friends who work at Pandora, this is an old story, and they are not shutting down. They are actually doing better than they ever have.
THB
thbproductions.com
 
Record Companies Shooting Their Feet Again

Once again, the record companies are shooting themselves in the foot.

I can think of more than a handful of times I've been listening to Pandora, and heard a song from an artist that I hadn't been interested in, and checked out more of their music, and bought a few albums or songs.

But this doesn't surprise me - they want to decide what gets played, like on terrestrial radio.

I am right with you here - with terrestrial radio more or less being OVER for anyone who isn't either under 16 or doesn't have totally vanilla taste in music, ideas like Pandora are a Godsend. I can pick out 2 or 3 bands that I REALLY LIKE but NEVER GET PLAYED ON THE RADIO (in my case, Beulah, Dr Dog and Wilco - OK, Wilco gets played a little), and Pandora can play songs for me by other groups I will never hear anywhere else that I will like and by music from. And the record companies want to drive this service out of business????

Once again they are asleep at the wheel, behind the times and killing that which would save them. They don't get how many people out here DON'T want to listen to Maroon 5 or Coldplay (feh and feh!), but love music. The alternative for me isn't that I will just cave in and listen to bland popular acts because I have no other choice - the alternative is I just stop buying and listening to new music(really, I have 2500 songs on my iPod that I like - that is enough). Something like Pandora is an amazing opportunity for the record companies and artists.

To me if the record industry is interested in a future, they need to get that the best idea is to offer variety and save money on their end. You can set up a passable recording studio with a room with egg cartons stapled to the wall, a PC and a couple of mixing boards(musics biggest sin over the last 20 years is overproduction - it is expensive AND makes most music worse), distribute for almost nothing over iTunes, and do very targeted marketing almost for free over services like Pandora. The whole idea is having 1000 bands making a good living instead of 10 owning their own jets. Which is how they got in trouble in the first place - buying 10 lottery tickets instead of 1000 T-Bills.
 
This is pretty terrible. I really like Pandora, even though it's introduced me to absolutely no new music :) It's terrible any time that someone's hard work and bright ideas are hamstrung by some *******...

There is no such thing as a "fully socialist" society; there has never been a single incidence of "ideal socialism." China is not a dictatorship so much as it is an oligarchy claiming to be a people's socialist government. Same with Korea. Most, if not all, of their "capitalist" enterprises are government-owned, controlled and funded. That's not capitalism.

And, as you just explained, it's not socialism either. It's people in positions of power screwing over the people without power -- without forethought, without dialogue, without remorse. The illusory divide of economic freedom matters very little. Anarchism FTW :D

Socialism doesn't work. It never has and it never will because, ideally, it strives to make sure everyone gets an equal share of everything without taking into account how hard one person works relative to another. People don't work that way. Some want to work harder to get ahead, some want to grab power, some want to be spoon-fed.

I think you misunderstand or misread socialism, because this is a common argument that I've seen no evidence for. I hear Marx quoted as saying "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" -- but this doesn't mean the absence of meritocracy, merely that the requirements of modern life be distributed equally in some way. I personally take it to mean public education, public healthcare, and some method of insuring that children (at least) are fed.

I don't see those as bad things. It is, at least, an attempt to level an unlevel playing field; as any kid going through a sociology course can tell you, the single greatest determiner of future wealth is childhood affluence.

Not to mention that many in our relatively stable society tend to misunderstand why they pay more taxes for more social programs. It is to prevent revolution. Accusations of idealism are leveled (with some justification) against each political ideology by those of the others; one oversight that seems to be made by libertarians and paleoconservatives is that the maintenance of any class structure of any significant assymetry requires substantial force.

We tend not to even imagine the possibility of revolution in this country -- the prospect is too goddamned horrifying (no matter what "side" you're on). Responsible social programs ("socialism," as you call it) are, in my opinion, the only way to build a better society without the inevitable and catastrophic failure of revolution.

And that is what we're all about, right? Not necessarily more products, not necessarily more luxury, not necessarily more obese children or complacent and idiotic adults... but a better society, with a more educated, more thoughtful, and more free population?

Socialism, despite its good intentions, always breaks down into totalitarianism followed by revolution.

A good quotation is "All revolutions fail." An adjunct is "Power corrupts." The French Revolution had some pretty wonderful ideals, and we all saw what happened to Robespierre, and shortly thereafter we met Napoleon.

Some might say that the American Revolution didn't fail -- it certainly, in my opinion, betrayed its principles before the ink on the Declaration of Independence was dry. Women didn't vote for well over a century. Black people -- well, we all know about that.

Asinine. Nowhere did I say I was unwilling to pay for things. I simply pointed out that the increasingly socialist federal government in this country is once again putting it's giant beak where it doesn't belong, hurting business and consumers in the end.

It's simply not socialist if it's acting on the behalf of company executives. Follow the money -- it's not going to enrich the proletariat :D It's going to sustain a dying industry's flawed business model.

It tends more toward fascism than socialism, but what it really is good old-fashioned corruption. The reason we're arguing about what it "is" is that corruption doesn't really adhere to any ideology.

(For what it's worth, I'm not a socialist or a communist, although I do respect the ideals of communism insofar as they are compatible with anarchism and other cute -isms that I can write on my iPod with my glitter pen, lolololol)
 
sad

I will be sad if it closes.

NOTE to the Music industry. Pandora can help you sell music trust me

ex.
There was a song playing on Pandora that I hadn't listen in years, my first instinct was to purchase the song from Amazon
 
Thanks RIAA this is why eventually they will drive themselves into the ground. Both the RIAA and the record companys have done more damage to the record industry.

They make people want to pirate music more than before. And all because they are greedy bastards. Thanks to Pandora I have purchased more music on itunes and Amazon. I'll be honest I use to use Limewire for most of my music downloads. Pandora made it so easy, it was a way to listen to new music and try out before you buy. Plus i got Correct ID3 tags and Album work. So i stoped the illegal download and payed for the music.

But now they do this to Pandora, so screw it, i guess its back to the old ways.
 
I think he was trying to make the point they were founded on purely socialist ideals (Communist manifesto). However human corruption led to this not being the case.

I don't believe a large socialist society will ever exist on a large scale. Humans are inherently too greedy for this to take place.

This is wildly offtopic I know, but just a heads-up: the problem with socialism is not human greed, but technical details of resource allocation. Basically it is impossible for any one person to know exactly how many windshield wipers are needed in Poland, and so we need a mechanism for distributed computing that allows the correct number to be collectively determined. Price is that mechanism.
 
Subscription Option

There IS a subscription option available for Pandora. If you click on "account" in the upper right after you've logged in, you have the option to subscribe for $36/year.

http://blog.pandora.com/faq/#64

I didn't see any other post mentioning this, but I might have missed it.

Pandora is worth at least 9.99 to me.

Make it paid and let us vote to support it with our cash.
 
That was the claim when cable TV first appeared. I thought it was absurd to pay for something that was previously free. Cable TV's big advantage was that it was ad-free, but that didn't last too long. Once people were hooked on cable, ads began appearing. So the cable companies were double-dipping, getting revenue streams from their subscribers and also from advertisers. And there was no longer anything special about the service. I'll bet the same thing will happen with satellite radio. Money talks....

What upsets me about this whole royalty thing is that it seems like the artists -- who deserve the money -- rarely see any of it unless they have have high-paid lawyers and accountants to ride herd on the big labels. It's the corporations that seem to profit. Yet the RIAA is always tugging heartstrings, bemoaning the poor struggling writers.

So Pandora probably now has to pay off the RIAA in order to keep streaming music. The beauty of Pandora is how it can introduce me to music that I'll probably like, but that I never would have listened to otherwise. So really Pandora is helping to sell more music. It's a streaming service, so it's not like I'm getting free downloads. Pandora is being punished for helping to sell more music. :(

Royalties don't pass through the hands of record labels (record companies). Royalties are collected by BMI/ASCAP and paid to the owners of the copyright. The copyright is generally held 50/50 with the songwriter and the publisher. Sometimes a writer/artist creates their own publishing company so that in a sense, they get all the royalties.

Record companies only receive profits (not royalties) from the actual recordings that are sold. Ditto with other performers on the recording.

In other words, everyone in the band isn't making the same amount of cash. Record companies pay to produce the product and advertise it. They also front a crapload of costs like tours, limos, airplanes, etc. The artists don't see a dime of profits until those bills are paid. Royalties however, are paid directly. Bands break up over all this, but it's just business. The drummer may have not written a single note or word of a song. He has no copyright. He's waiting until the record sells enough copies to pay back the production costs fronted by the record company to get any money at all. The lead singer that may have written the song, is at the same time pulling in royalties for every play on the radio (it's MTV that struck the deal not to pay royalties, not radio). The royalties get calculated by the size of a stations audience, watts, etc.

If you're the songwriter, it's immensely more lucrative than the performer. Everytime a songs gets covered by a band, the writer gets royalties for all the radio plays. (The cover band gets nada of course). Paul McCartney is making money off all the old Beatles songs every day. Ringo only gets a couple cents per sale of each song he performed on. Which Paul gets as well.

Some bands consider all members to be part of the song. Widespread Panic for example lists all songs as written by Widespread Panic. That means the bongo player makes as much money as the lead singer or guitarist that wrote the melody and words. Seems like a nice solution until someone decides someone else isn't pulling their weight.

It's a wonder any successful band stays together!
 
Royalties don't pass through the hands of record labels (record companies). Royalties are collected by BMI/ASCAP and paid to the owners of the copyright. The copyright is generally held 50/50 with the songwriter and the publisher. Sometimes a writer/artist creates their own publishing company so that in a sense, they get all the royalties.

Record companies only receive profits (not royalties) from the actual recordings that are sold. Ditto with other performers on the recording.

In other words, everyone in the band isn't making the same amount of cash. Record companies pay to produce the product and advertise it. They also front a crapload of costs like tours, limos, airplanes, etc. The artists don't see a dime of profits until those bills are paid. Royalties however, are paid directly. Bands break up over all this, but it's just business. The drummer may have not written a single note or word of a song. He has no copyright. He's waiting until the record sells enough copies to pay back the production costs fronted by the record company to get any money at all. The lead singer that may have written the song, is at the same time pulling in royalties for every play on the radio (it's MTV that struck the deal not to pay royalties, not radio). The royalties get calculated by the size of a stations audience, watts, etc.

If you're the songwriter, it's immensely more lucrative than the performer. Everytime a songs gets covered by a band, the writer gets royalties for all the radio plays. (The cover band gets nada of course). Paul McCartney is making money off all the old Beatles songs every day. Ringo only gets a couple cents per sale of each song he performed on. Which Paul gets as well.

Some bands consider all members to be part of the song. Widespread Panic for example lists all songs as written by Widespread Panic. That means the bongo player makes as much money as the lead singer or guitarist that wrote the melody and words. Seems like a nice solution until someone decides someone else isn't pulling their weight.

It's a wonder any successful band stays together!

Thanks for having the patience to explain this. The amount of posts from people that know nothing about what they're talking about never ceases to amaze me.
 
...you've obviously never heard of the Soviet Union, the "People's Republic" of China or the "People's Republic" of Korea. Those governments really have/had the people's best interests in mind, didn't they?

Um, just because the execution is poor, that doesn't mean the concept sucks.

Of course, we can just continue to pretend that this country is a democracy and that all of the unelected, faceless "special interests" aren't the ones who *really* write our laws. We can also pretend that, in this country, if you don't have buckets of money, you can still be part of the process and not subject to the legislative whims of those with fat wallets.

Or not.
 
The Soviet Union was never really socialist. How to tell? When leaders are rich and the people are poor. In an ideal socialist society, everyone is equal. In a perfect world, socialism would be a better choice than capitalism. Not the best choice, but a better choice. (Example: ideal capitalism allows people to starve, while ideal socialism supports everybody). The "People's Republic" of China is a dictatorship, with a mix of socialist and capitalist ideas added in. Most people don't realize how capitalist China is. I don't know a lot about Korea.

Point is, you're wrong. Those aren't fully socialist societies.

Ah, someone with a brain. How nice! :D
 
Apple Inc. would not even have been born or exist in a socialist society.

You would have no Mac, iPod, or iPhone. There would be no incentive to make cool things or great art. We'd all be the same and poor. No thanks!

This kind of thinking is just pathetic. Is money really the only thing that motivates you? I think a lot of open source advocates would argue otherwise. Maybe one day we'll evolve to the point where doing something great, simply BECAUSE it is great, is reward enough. Or you can continue to argue that institutionalized greed and gluttony are the best humans will ever be...
 
This is wildly offtopic I know, but just a heads-up: the problem with socialism is not human greed, but technical details of resource allocation. Basically it is impossible for any one person to know exactly how many windshield wipers are needed in Poland, and so we need a mechanism for distributed computing that allows the correct number to be collectively determined. Price is that mechanism.

You bring up an interesting point. As we mature and our technology evolves, resource allocation will be much easier. If we don't destroy ourselves first, technology has great potential to level the field a bit and lift everyone up in the process...the Star Trek utopia of the future where one is free to pursue one's passions, not because of the paycheck, but simply for the reward of doing what one enjoys.
 
The Soviet Union was never really socialist. How to tell? When leaders are rich and the people are poor. In an ideal socialist society, everyone is equal. In a perfect world, socialism would be a better choice than capitalism. Not the best choice, but a better choice. (Example: ideal capitalism allows people to starve, while ideal socialism supports everybody). The "People's Republic" of China is a dictatorship, with a mix of socialist and capitalist ideas added in. Most people don't realize how capitalist China is. I don't know a lot about Korea.

Point is, you're wrong. Those aren't fully socialist societies.

There is nobody starving in the US right now that is not by choice or by a choice forced on them by another person.

Starving is a very specific condition that is fatal. It is not simply being a bit hungry.

So clearly you can have a capitalistic society where people don't starve.
 
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