In searching for better benchmarks, Judge Stanton is much more impressed by internal Pandora emails in late December 2013 that discussed how Pandora and big publishers came to interim deals when the old licensing agreement expired. At the time, Sony and Universal were telling Pandora the price for not being sued. Nevertheless, the judge says it is “revelatory of [Pandora] executives’ contemporary appreciation of free-market rates.” (It also shows that Universal has been expecting Pandora’s revenue to climb up to $1.5 billion this year.)
Source: Judge Explains Why Pandora Must Pay 2.5 Percent of Revenue to BMI | Billboard