I finally gave up on Pandora

Kris Kristofferson is my favorite artist. They have versions of his songs like "Billy Dee" from the Cedar Creek Sessions in 2014 where he sounds half dead. They also have horrible rerecordings of groups like The Animals and The Grassroots.

It probably disproportionately effects me because I have old tastes.

Here's an example Cedar creek Duvaliers dream

problem with pandora is they have licensed a VERY VERY VERY limited set of songs (they throw out new hits occasionally so you don't notice the sleight-of-hand) but i can fricking tell you what station you're listening to on pandora after 3-4 songs because the collection is so shitty and so limited.

to be fair, google and spotify do this as well. you pay a premium but they steer you to the same old songs they have the best financial deals for and yes, you can go to the trouble to link an album and play it, but those songs will never EVER EVER show up for streaming on their own.

FACT. you have to 'stick' a bunch of albums and then create a playlist from those to actually listen to the music you want.

it sucks.

this is the streaming music industry's dirty little secret.

I still ride with Pandora

I hate it because Wheb I wanna listen to Wiz Khalifa radio, it doesn't mean I wanna hear Biggie Smalls or that God forsaken Do or Die crap. They want you to hear Bone Thugs so bad on every single rap station. They suck

The artists themselves are usually behind the re-recordings. It's all about $$.

If Pandora plays one of Kris's old tunes, Kris is entitled to a royalty as songwriter. Another royalty is paid to the owner of the sound recording. That is usually the record company, and Kris likely gets none of that under the typical terms of a recording contract.

What to do? Kris re-records his old hits and licenses them to Pandora for a sweeter deal than what Pandora paid for the original recordings, but Kris gets both pieces of the royalty and leaves the record company in the cold.

They also do this when a movie or commercial wants to use an old song. Re-record, and the artist gets the writing and sound recording royalties when he licenses the song for use. Record company gets zilch.

Here is a good article about it. LINK