No, no, no and forever no.

Aside from a handful of top artists, almost none make anything from the sale of recorded music and that isn’t something new. Further, Pandora does pay content owners. How much and what percentage of that ends up in artist hands is a lot more interesting question very much akin to the issue of who profits form CD and download sales.

Pandora is by far the biggest streamed music service and they are being choked to death (I.e. losing money every quarter despite a growing customer base) not by piracy but by egregious music label royalty rates well in excess of those paid by players in other distribution segments.

But don’t take my word for it. Founder Tim Westergren recently pleaded with Congress to pass the Internet Radio Fairness Act, which would level the playing field.

Again, recording music from terrestrial radio is legal. Why would it be illegal for me or anyone to make a personal recording of a song from Internet radio? Because it’s “wrong” or because the labels spent millions on lobbying to make it illegal?

Who do you think bought and paid for egregiously high Internet radio royalty rate legislation — artists?

You really need to educate yourself and stop repeating music industry boiler plate lies.

That recording you just made from Pandora took money out of their pocket for a song you would have had to purchase otherwise.

That kind of clarifies my thinking when I look at it that way. … And I’m back to illegal and the corresponding guilt.

No distribution, no (moral) crime.

However, given the utterly absurd nature of copyright law now, if you have to ask, it’s probably illegal.