My argument is trying to judge Pandora in the same way as radio, in that the number of plays as counted on Pandora reaches far less people than the number of plays as counted on radio. What the artist wants is to be paid for every person that listens to their song right?
So when you say "Only if you claim every radio has an average of one listener by this methodology as well", I think you misunderstand the core problem, which is that the article compares stats that aren't equivalent.
The issue is in how these listens are counted. So yes, you can pretty much claim every Pandora device has an average of one listener. Users of Pandora have their own personalized streams, and every time a song is played on a person's stream, it's counted as 1 play, and is heard by 1 person.
In contrast, radio stations have one stream that many many people listen to. When a radio station broadcasts a song once it's counted as 1 play even though that song is received by X radio-receivers and heard by X people (where X is the reach that station has, for example, 150k).
The issue is the article compares plays on Pandora (where each play as counted reaches 1 listener on average) to plays on radio (where each play as counted reaches upwards of 150k listeners).
So when you say "Only if you claim every radio has an average of one listener by this methodology as well", I think you misunderstand the core problem, which is that the article compares stats that aren't equivalent.
The issue is in how these listens are counted. So yes, you can pretty much claim every Pandora device has an average of one listener. Users of Pandora have their own personalized streams, and every time a song is played on a person's stream, it's counted as 1 play, and is heard by 1 person.
In contrast, radio stations have one stream that many many people listen to. When a radio station broadcasts a song once it's counted as 1 play even though that song is received by X radio-receivers and heard by X people (where X is the reach that station has, for example, 150k).
The issue is the article compares plays on Pandora (where each play as counted reaches 1 listener on average) to plays on radio (where each play as counted reaches upwards of 150k listeners).