Surviving members of Pink Floyd Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason are speaking out against Pandora Radio’s attempt to slash the royalties for artists whose music streams over their website.
In a letter to USA Today , the band mates call out the Internet-based music streaming website, saying that they are acting on a “matter of principle.”
“For almost all working musicians, it's also a question of economic survival,” Waters (pictured), Gilmour, and Mason write. “Nearly 90% of the artists who get a check for digital play receive less than $5,000 a year. They cannot afford the 85% pay cut Pandora asked Congress to impose on the music community.”
In the open letter, the musicians site a campaign to cut artists pay that failed last year thanks to the signatures of famous rockers such as Billy Joel and Rihanna. The trio also criticizes Pandora for encouraging the pay cut especially considering the company’s growth over the past few years. According to Rolling Stone , Pandora’s IPO has raised by $235 million in the past two years.
“A business that exists to deliver music can’t really complain that their biggest cost is music,” Waters, Gilmour, and Mason said, “Everyone deserves to be paid a fair market rate for their work, regardless of what that work entails.”
The artists take particular issue with the company’s encouragement that artists support the bill saying, “Fine print is one thing. But a musician could read this ‘letter of support’ a dozen times and hold it up to a funhouse mirror for good measure without realizing she was signing a call to cut her own royalties to pad Pandora's bottom line.”
Though Waters, Gilmour, and Mason are clearly not going down without a fight, the band members close their letter by quoting an open letter addressed to Pandora last year in which musicians stated they wanted to “work this out as partners.”
Image: Wikimedia Commons