Culture

Pandora Radio: No Longer Free, But Cheap

by Truemorist | July 8, 2009 at 09:45 am

4618 views | 1 Recommendation | 4 comments

Pandora Radio is no longer free, but it's certainly cheap. If you listen to over 40 hours of music per month through Pandora's service, you'll get shaken down for a hefty 99-cent fee, which will open the box, as it were, to unlimited listening for the rest of the month. This is the result of a complicated royalty battle. Hey, is there any other kind?

Pandora says that this will only affect 10% of its users.

In essence, we're asking our heaviest users to put a dollar (well, almost a dollar) in the tip jar in any month in which they listen over 40 hours. We hope this is relatively painless and affordable--the same price as a single song download.

Come on. Ninety-nine cents is less than you spend on the electricity to drive your computer when you're pirating stuff from Demonoid.

I'm onto you.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have the entire Skid Row back catalogue to listen to.

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gdzjr (not verified)

at 10:03 on July 8th, 2009

nickel and dime'd

David Locke (not verified)

at 11:16 on July 8th, 2009

So I'll pay for music discovery? Do I discover music? No. Yes, there are new artists, but I sold all my CDs to survive. I'll repurchase them if I ever get out of survival mode. I'll do this before I'm ready to discover new artists. I wouldn't mind paying if my channels actually delivered more than three of songs for the channel's artist, and if those songs were not just covers for other artists.

Somehow channels and music discovery are at odds with each other. All my channels tend to discover the same artists. I guess I'm narrow.

The fee isn't an issue because of the fee. The fee is an issue, because you have to expose your credit card online.

zeus (not verified)

at 13:31 on July 8th, 2009

Couldn't you just register for another account? This subscription process doesn't really sound effective if they are attempting to make money. Plus what David said. :)