"We only half agree: Abundant evidence shows that people
– including top managers – will in fact start to behave
differently if you make a large proportion of their remuneration
dependent on some measure of performance. But it will not be in
a way you want them to behave."
Of course, licensing rates means that the company only gets to see a few hundred million of that, and a significant portion of that needs to go to advertising sales personnel -- audio advertising is incredibly hands-on compared to other forms of internet advertising.
As an aside: it was interesting when the stock cratered last year to the point where the market cap of the company was lower than its annual revenue -- all the revenue in the world doesn't make up for negative margins.