I think the point is that Pandora acts as a discovery app. It plays you something and you think "hey I like it, I'll go buy it on iTunes".
Now I have no reason to believe I am representative (and in fact I would be surprised if I was), but 60% of the music I have purchased in the last couple of years has been as a follow-up to a Pandora play. Another 35% has been following a Shazam tag from a radio station, and about 5% from a movie soundtrack or something like that. Of those, Pandora is the only one that causes me to buy albums instead of solely individual tracks, which is an order of magnitude more money.
So I know for a fact that N artists got money from me that they would have never gotten if not for Pandora. That doesn't help the (100-N) whose track played and I didn't buy them; but, you know, I actually didn't care enough to want to listen to them again. Or, Pandora played them while I had the computer on mute (played is not the same as listened).
Now the legitimate question is, how many people are like me, as opposed to people who use Pandora without buying anything at all as a result of what they hear? I don't know the answer to that question and I suspect neither does Pandora (they have a "buy" button so they can presumably track that, but I only sometimes use it rather than just independently look for the artist on iTunes some later time).
this reminded me of a guy who downloaded an audio book at piratebay, enjoyed it and then searched for it on amazon, to see what other books people bought with it. then downloaded those at shady sites too. but then, he usually donates to authors of software that he uses (e.g. Libre Office). Maybe we need an easier donation model for music. one that gives 99% of the money to the author/perfotmer
Now I have no reason to believe I am representative (and in fact I would be surprised if I was), but 60% of the music I have purchased in the last couple of years has been as a follow-up to a Pandora play. Another 35% has been following a Shazam tag from a radio station, and about 5% from a movie soundtrack or something like that. Of those, Pandora is the only one that causes me to buy albums instead of solely individual tracks, which is an order of magnitude more money.
So I know for a fact that N artists got money from me that they would have never gotten if not for Pandora. That doesn't help the (100-N) whose track played and I didn't buy them; but, you know, I actually didn't care enough to want to listen to them again. Or, Pandora played them while I had the computer on mute (played is not the same as listened).
Now the legitimate question is, how many people are like me, as opposed to people who use Pandora without buying anything at all as a result of what they hear? I don't know the answer to that question and I suspect neither does Pandora (they have a "buy" button so they can presumably track that, but I only sometimes use it rather than just independently look for the artist on iTunes some later time).