Today Pandora announced a partnership with Music Reports, a rights administration platform, to manage the company’s mechanical licensing and royalty administration for its new interactive streaming service. With the agreement, Pandora is hoping to provide some transparency to the streaming music industry which has been riddled with problems and class action lawsuits for copyright infringement and failure to properly track and pay royalties.

“As we expand the listening experience on Pandora, it’s important that we continue to ensure music makers are not only accurately and fairly compensated, but also have more control and greater transparency around the use of their art,” said Tim Westergren, Pandora Founder and CEO, in a June 6 press release. “That’s why Music Reports’ opt-in licensing and full reporting infrastructure is so important. I’m thrilled to be working with another partner that puts artists’ interests first.”

Bill Colitre, vice president and general counsel for Music Reports, commented on the arrangement:

“Pandora and Music Reports share a commitment to comprehensive licensing solutions so that royalties properly flow to publishers and songwriters. Music Reports is in a unique position to reach every active publisher in the market, ensuring Pandora can offer them all the opportunity to participate in these new services, on the same terms. This is another huge step forward for music licensing in the United States,” Colitre said.

Interested music publishers can access the licensing offer at MusicReports.com and decide whether or not they wish to accept the terms of the agreement.

In related news, at music industry conference Midem this weekend, Westergren said that Pandora is not for sale and is trying to reinventing itself, said Venture Beat’s Chris O’Brien.

“We are on a path to do something big and something for the long-term,” said the CEO.

Part of defining that path involves looking at Pandora’s 100 million users, the vast majority of whom listen to Pandora for free, and creating something for them that has more capabilities and which they’d be willing to pay for. To that end, using the assets they acquired with the purchase of Rdio, Pandora is creating a streaming music service that is personalized and intuitive, based on data Pandora has already gathered about a user’s specific experience. The new subscription product will be offered at different price tiers, capping at about $10 a month.

“We think there are some people who will pay less for fewer features. That’s our working thesis,” Westergren said at Midem.

Insider Take:

It is nice to hear some positive news about Pandora, and we credit that to Westergren who replaced CEO Brian McAndrews in March. As Pandora’s original founder, Westergren has a passion for Pandora and rather than publicly griping about the streaming music industry’s flaws as McAndrews did often, he is solution-oriented. Rather than putting the company up for sale, he is addressing Pandora’s two primary problems: licensing and royalty issues with artists and publishers and enticing more of its 100 million listeners to pay for some version of their product.

These are big challenges that will be difficult to overcome considering the huge financial hole Pandora is in, but the deal with Music Reports and the move toward a personalized, multi-tiered subscription streaming service are great steps in the right direction. We like that Westergren is taking charge and making big moves, because that’s what Pandora needs to stay afloat. As we learn more about its new subscription services, we’ll be sure to share that information so stay tuned!