Corporate welfare? No this about common sense
Nice of you to call me a hero, Anonymous Coward. That's very sweet of you, but I'm merely highlighting the unfair status quo. You're absolutely right the world doesn't owe Pandora a living, but the royalty bodies do need to assess the maturity of Internet radio and come up with royalty figures that reflect it.
It also sounds like you think 2.434p is how much Pandora is making per listener per hour, it's not, it's how much the royalty bodies want to charge per hour per listener, before they make any money.
And as I've already said, Anonymous Coward, this situation covers all 'customised radio stations' or 'interactive webcasting services', who want to run a legitimate company that ensures that artists are paid the royalties due to them and not just Pandora. The company is being referenced, because it's one of the most popular and it's the one announcing its departure from the UK.
@Paul, I'm sure this situation may well force Pandora and other services to reassess their advertising methods and figure out ways to eek out more pennies from punters. Meanwhile, though it's not looking good for artists, particularly those without major label contracts. Internet radio is a wild west, most of the remaining services either don't seem that bothered about paying royalties or have done individual deals with the major labels to get limited access to their artists.
I'm not sure what the Alliance and PPL expect to gain from this, except to make less money for their clients in this particular niche.
Paul, I also appreciate your position in wanting to get the best deal for your artists, but I'd speculate that without getting an agreement from the PPL and Alliance, Pandora hasn't really been in a position to 'mop up' the remaining aggregators like State51.
The petition hit 1,100 signatures this morning. Not bad considering people have to give their address, but not enough to draw the required mainstream media attention.