Pandora doesn’t need to pay higher royalties to songwriters, court rules

Pandora has been fighting tooth and nail against potential songwriting royalty increases, and it appears that this tenacity is largely paying off. A court has ruled that the streaming radio service should pay the same 1.85 percent royalty rate that it has paid for years, resisting both Pandora’s call for 1.7 percent and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ demand for 3 percent. Details of the ruling are under a court seal, so the motivations behind the decision aren’t yet clear.