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http://blog.pandora.com/us/pan...

"March 13, 2017"

From http://www.pandora.com/restric... " Pandora is only available in the U.S. right now – but we are working on bringing our music service to other parts of the world. "

They have this message since they started offering service.

Does anything but ads actually use Flash in this day and age? I haven't had it installed for several years!

Let's see... these are just some results using Firefox 41.0.1 on OS X Mavericks:

Spotify: "To enjoy Spotify, please install Adobe Flash. It's free."

Pandora: "In order to use Pandora internet radio, please upgrade to a more current browser or install a newer version of Flash (v.10 or later)."

Hulu: "Hulu requires Flash Player 11.0.1.152 or higher. Please download and install the latest version of Flash Player before continuing."

I'm sure there are plenty more, but just these three are enough to prove that you're dead wrong -- or just trolling. And no, there's no love lost between Flash and me, either.

RT.

There are literally thousands of free streaming music stations covering every nook and cranny of music tastes.
Google it... here are just a few:
http://streema.com/
http://www.jango.com/
http://www.pandora.com/
http://www.live365.com/
http://www.slacker.com/

It's foolish to pay for streaming music when there is so much available free.

http://help.pandora.com/custom...

You can see they have a submission form to their system and everything that does independent authorization of every submission. And as you can see they say they say they choose to "buy" content when submitted. That means prices PER artist and PER release are individually negotiable. ... I demand a mia culpa.

If a recording artist is his own label, how would he go about getting his music onto FM or satellite radio or onto the playlists of popular Internet streaming music providers, such as Pandora, Spotify, and foreign counterparts?

Information for artists submitting to Pandora

Information for artists submitting to Spotify

Getting your music on iTunes

In short, that depends on the service they want their music on. Different services have different procedures.

And how should a songwriter make sure that he didn't accidentally copy parts of a popular song when writing his own?

As you so helpfully pointed out, they don't/can't always. The human mind is prone to subconscious influence; there's no way around that.

RIAA-affiliated labels add value through promotion and through their affiliated music publishers.

True, although it's debatable whether the value that they add is greater than the cost that they impose. The artists that they promote are like lottery winners: the lucky few that you can point to as indicators that the system is beneficial to artists and the public as a whole. In a nutshell, they're a great example of a selection bias.

And Pandora already reports your listening activity (just not to the artist):

Pandora Privacy Policy
We use the information that we collect for the following purposes:
[...]
* To pay artists and copyright owners for tracks you hear, by reporting listening information to copyright licensing agencies. These reports contain aggregated data only, and do not include your personally identifiable information.

All Zoe is asking for is access to that aggregated listening data, which you've already agreed you are okay with sharing (by using the Pandora service). But the laws do not currently require it, and she doesn't have a way to access it. Seems like a very reasonable request to me.

If you do remove gadgets, there is only one true loss. The Pandora gadget is extremely useful because it provides the only ad-free frontend to pandora. If you disable Gadgets, you can still access it through this link:

http://internal-tuner.pandora.com/windowsgadget/gadget.jsp

I found the audio to be choppy for some reason under firefox when you navigate away from the tab that contains it... for that reason it should likely be spawned into its own window.

They cut you off after 40 hours a month unless you're willing to pay an extra $.99 to continue listening. If you want a better service you can also subscribe to Pandora One which gives you unlimited listening plus a bunch of perks for like 3 dollars a month. If they can get 100 of their current listeners to subscribe then they've made money at those rates.

There's still virtually no way that they've money at that point due to the way the government officially handles custom streams. (usual slashdot disclaimers ensuing, IANAL, I am not extremely well versed in this information, I just happen to have paid attention especially because it's two of my fields of knowledge, music and tech) A custom streaming station is considered a radio station and therefore is subject to the same royalties as any radio station. That being said, they have removed the 40 hr listening cap as of September, but they continue with ad support due to the extreme expense they are faced with. When you subscribe to Pandora One, they drop the ads.

This last bit is idle speculation, but I presume companies are willing to pay more for an ad on a service like Pandora where they have a captive audience. This would definitely help alleviate their costs, but it, most likely, would not be quite enough to subsidize the entire process (think of how many people you know who have/use Pandora and think of how many have Pandora One), so the individuals who purchase Pandora One are likely helping the rest of us out by doing so.

http://store.steampowered.com/
http://itunes.com/
http://netflix.com/
http://hulu.com/
http://spotify.com/
http://pandora.com/

The fact is in the real world no-one uses EULAs or any derivation thereof to sell music to consumers

Sure they do. Here's one.

Have you actually read that? They aren't selling you a license at all.

Also, you're an idiot. You keep claiming that your argument only applies to music, but then you refer to "copyright owner", "copyright law" and "copyright holders". Music is not some special category of copyrighted work that gets treated differently, as I've pointed out a few times now.

Just because it applies to music in the confines of copyright law doesn't mean it applies to everything covered by copyright law. When you buy software it almost always comes with a EULA where the owner stipulates the licensing terms, when you buy music it doesn't come with a EULA and the terms of use are simply those laid out by copyright law.

Your claims about "copyright" in general might happen to be generally accurate if "copyright" only applies to music, but in reality it happens to not. What's more, even if they are generally accurate about music, they are only coincidentally so because of the music industry's typical licensing practice.

And that's exactly what im discussing, you can write a contract to dictate the terms of just about anything, but the music industry does not do this unlike say the software industry - also copyright material - that does do this.

The fact is in the real world no-one uses EULAs or any derivation thereof to sell music to consumers

Sure they do. Here's one.

the license terms are dictated by copyright law and not by copyright holders

The license terms are dictated by both. If the copyright holders wanted to stipulate additional terms, they could.

Also, you're an idiot. You keep claiming that your argument only applies to music, but then you refer to "copyright owner", "copyright law" and "copyright holders". Music is not some special category of copyrighted work that gets treated differently, as I've pointed out a few times now. Your claims about "copyright" in general might happen to be generally accurate if "copyright" only applies to music, but in reality it happens to not. What's more, even if they are generally accurate about music, they are only coincidentally so because of the music industry's typical licensing practice.

http://blog.pandora.com/faq/contents/1643.html

I guess they lie in their FAQ, but they do explain why they need that access.

Really? this wasn't clear and upfront enough?

Information about your computer or device: We may also collect information about the computer, mobile or other devices you use to access and listen to the Service. For example, our servers receive and record information about your computer and browser, including potentially your IP address, browser type, and other software or hardware information. If you access the Service from a mobile or other device, we may collect a unique device identifier assigned to that device or other transactional information for that device.

With such headings as "Automatic Data Collection", "How we use the information we collect:", and "How the information we collect is shared:" it's kind of hard for me to see how there was any ambiguity?

On the other hand, I know most people never bothered to read the privacy statement but that is by no means Pandora's fault. They provided the information - if users failed to actually read it, that's on them.

http://blog.pandora.com/faq/contents/1643.html

The reasons they give are actually pretty good. IF you want to send your stations to a friend, it needs email and contacts. IF you want to add a concert, etc to your calendar, it needs calendar access. It uses GPS to give better targeted advertising (Metallica at the MCI center on )

When it comes down to it, you're looking at a screen smaller than a deck of cards. Multi-tasking on that is pretty much useless.

I commonly run Glympse while listening to Pandora on my way home, so my wife knows when to expect me. I also sometime run Trapster to check for speed traps. None of those apps give a shit about the screen most of the time. That then allows me to run one of many apps that show traffic information on the screen. Running 4 apps at the same time might slow my charge rate to a crawl, but it is extremely useful.

At the same time, the lack of that ability is keeping me from moving from iPhone to WM7. However, this fall I'm sure I'll try one out.

Sony doesn't need to pay attention, the PS3 is already there.

- Local media: The PS3 can do local media (video/audio/pictures on the HD, or a USB drive).
- Remote Media: The PS3 can act as a DLNA client
- CD/DVD/Blu-Ray: The PS3 has it built in.
- Netflix: Since the last update, the Netflix client is now built into the console.
- Hulu+: The Hulu+ client is available as a free download from the PSN Store (you DO need to have a Hulu+ account with Hulu though). Also, Hulu is still working on expanding the content available on Hulu+ devices versus Hulu, so some things are still missing.
- Vudu: They just added a Vudu client for "Same day as DVD release" Video on Demand.
- Sports: both "MBA.tv" and "NHL Gamecenter LIVE" have Clients (great if you're a sports nut, or married to one)
- VoD: Sony has been working to build out their VoD service. rent/buy TV/Movies (including next day availability of Cable TV shows, and making shows available by Channel to make things easier to find including HBO, Showtime, SyFy, etc.)

Coupled with the increased quality of Over The Air signals since the Digital Switchover, and the need for cable is less and less (depending on how you consume). In a busy city I get at least 10 stations (plus substations), with HD quality reception.

Personally I ditched cable and went with a PS3 and a TiVo.
The TiVo adds an easy to use DVR with a Dual Tuner (record up to two shows at once, while watching a third pre-recorded), includes a Netflix client, is supposed to get a Hulu+ client (according to both Hulu and TiVo), and also includes:
- YouTube client
- Blockbuster Video Client
- Amazon Video On Demand Client
- Pandora Radio Client
- and a few others (I'm getting too tired to list).

=========
For me the cost breakdown was as follows:
Cost:
- Top of the line TiVo with a lifetime subscription runs $500 + $13/month recurring. (gives capacity for ~150 Hours of HD quality recording or >1000 of SD level quality)
- Low end PlayStation 3 runs $300.
- Hulu+ runs $8/month
- Netflix runs $8/month (for streaming only, +$2 to include DVD shipping also)

Total cost:
Initial cost (minus tax, cables, antenna): $800
Recurring month cost: $30

Cable used to run me $130/month (for Cable+Internet), I switched to DSL (~$30/month) and what I listed above, and it dropped my monthly bills by $100 a month (though it takes 8-9 months before the savings kicks in since you're purchasing your own equpiment).
That allows me to get the occasional VoD Movie from Amazon VoD, or purchase a season of a Cable only show or two, and still come out ahead overall (plus I can budget myself and decide if I have the money for it, instead of being hit the cost every month, like it or not, wether I use it or not).
=========

As an added bonus, the PS3 also play games, and the TiVo records other shows constantly once it know what you like, so there is usually SOMETHING you might find interesting, even if it is a rerun of a different show.

You could also throw in a cheaper/cheap DVR if you don't care/want the dual tuners, or NO DVR if its just not feature you're interested in, which drops both the initial cost and the recurring cost quite a bit.

Cable's days (as we know it) are numbered, depending entirely on the Nets ability to absorb the extra use and the Cable Co's willingness to break Net Neutrality.

The Pandora One client is written with Adobe Air.. pretty simplistic UI, but I guess its extremely cross platform.

Make a service that makes it easy to find and enjoy the media you want. Add a good recommendation engine on top of it. Price it competitively with cableTV+Rhapsody. Watch the money roll in.

You pretty much just described Pandora's business model. They have a free internet radio service that works something like this: You tell them what kind of music you want to hear, they let you listen to it (and things like it, thanks to their "music genome project"), they link everything to Amazon and iTunes so you can buy it if you like it, and POOF! They make money. Adding their "pay us and you can stop getting ads with your music" service just ices their cake.

Disclaimer: I don't have any affiliation with pandora.com, I'm just an avid listener and paying subscriber.

If only there was a way that you could listen to a song before buying it, or read someone else's opinion about a movie before watching it. And if only there were free sources of music and movies to watch...

Well What apps do you "need" actually almost all phone apps are wants and not needs but there are a few people that do need some phone apps.
The simple answer is Google it.
Pandora for Android http://www.pandora.com/android
A pod catcher http://blogs.zdnet.com/cell-phones/?p=1905
Really it just isn't that hard.
And I didn't trip over that mole hill. I have an Android phone and have all the apps I want.

Pandora.

Absent is definitely worse. Consider the Nokia N800/810/900; touchscreen-based devices (for the 8x0, at least, it's resistive sensing; no multi-touch, though stylus works) with working Flash. Yes, playing Flash games can be hard (some don't require anything other than clicking, but some require keyboard input too which is tricky on a phone-sized device, especially the N800 which lacks a hardware keyboard). On the other hand, long before Pandora had specialized apps for things like the iPhone, I could load http://pandora.com/ in the N800's web browser, and (after a minute of so of loading; Flash 9 on a 400MHz ARM is not fast) it worked fine. You know what's really funny? The Pandora applet actually *does* use hover... and yet it was 100% usable with a touchscreen. Nothing *required* hover support... and you actually could hover anyhow, by tapping on a non-active part of the applet and dragging onto the sensitive region.

The only Flash applets I've seen that specifically require hover to do things that you can't achieve with a click (because it does something entirely different) are advertisements. The NXX0 has AdBlock Plus for MicroB (or Mobile Firefox, with the normal ABP) and suddenly it's not even relevant (plus your pages load fast and you don't waste screen real-estate on ads). Meanwhile, Youtube (including embedded videos in other pages) works. Hulu works. Those book-reading websites that use Flash to prevent copy-paste work. Your random flash-navigated website probably works. Accounting for the limitations of the display and keyboard, many games work.

Yes, I'll gladly trade some things being broken for a large chunk of web content simply being absent.

see http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091119/1634117011.shtml for a list of some other people you have never heard of making money by giving their music away.

being honest is paying what i feel the music is worth, since $15 for an album is too much i haven't bought an album in 4+ years(i may have bought one or 2 at a concert in that time) I have not downloaded music in that time either. Good thing http://www.pandora.com/ and the radio exist, otherwise i'd be listening to the same music i had from 10 years ago.

Since you're an idiot that can't read their page and still have the nerve to call me a liar. Here's a list of phones that aren't BB, WinMo, or iPhone. Sprint Phones including Sliders

As for Wifi, I didn't say the wifi didn't work, I said that automatic detection didn't, because every ATT does to lock you in means that it favors MediaNet even when reception is crappy and WIFI reception is good. So I force it to manually use WIFI for each of the services. This is fine for me, but I can't expect my users to want to go through the massive inconvenience.

Plus, I run out of music to listen to.

Try something that creates variety to your taste like Pandora?

I would tend to agree. On the other hand, what if it just affects "bandwidth hogs"?

So you stay at $30/month. But how about the guy who plugs his iPhone into the car radio and listens to Pandora every weekday for 3 hours on his commute and watches Star Trek episodes streamed from CBS.com and YouTube videos over lunch? Would you cancel your contract because he has to pay $100/month?

Honestly, I went and looked at my settings on my iPhone, which I haven't reset. I bought the phone in July of this year. I've received 151MB via AT&T's network in four months. So I'm not too worried about a 5GB cap.

That said, I paid for "Unlimited" and that means unlimited. If AT&T changed it so I had a 5GB cap, I would probably stay. But if I wanted to leave, I'd expect to be able to leave without paying any kind of early termination fee.

Hulu says that their reason for restricting content is "clearing the rights for each show or film in each specific geography." Well, why not make the site available to at least all of the places where these rights are already cleared. Eh? Name a show that is in the U.S. that are explicitly banned in, lets say, Canada. But to be honest, I only care about the fact that I can't access Pandora

Actualy, they probably don't have the rights for a show in Canada. For exmample, CBC might own the rights to broadcast Heroes in Canada, while NBC owns the rights to broadcast it in the US. Therefore, Hulu needs to pay money to CBC to show Heroes in Canada. (It's a terrible outdated model, I know, but its very difficult to undo the hundreds of already existing licensing deals.)

Hulu says that their reason for restricting content is "clearing the rights for each show or film in each specific geography." Well, why not make the site available to at least all of the places where these rights are already cleared. Eh? Name a show that is in the U.S. that are explicitly banned in, lets say, Canada.

But to be honest, I only care about the fact that I can't access Pandora

There are many music download and music access services available. Just go elsewhere. Like so many "firsts" on the Net - e.g. eBay, Yahoo, etc. - iTunes seems old in the tooth. Couple that with egregious DRM policies and attempts to choke interoperability. Why bother. I like Apple products, but who really needs iTunes for music. Other than as a software platform for playback, I could care less about the iTunes music store. Try these: http://www.amazon.com/MP3-Music-Download/b?ie=UTF8&node=163856011 http://pandora.com/ http://www.emusic.com/ http://www.slacker.com/ http://www.napster.com/ http://music.myspace.com/ www.youtube.com http://www.rhapsody.com/home.html http://www.walmart.com/music http://www.last.fm/ http://social.zune.net/music/ http://www.seeqpod.com/

I don't care how much you pay for Pandora; We can't get it in the EU. See http://www.pandora.com/restricted

What I can get, however, is Spotify, and I am more than happy to pay â9 per month for the service. It's all about value to the customer, to me. â9 this month has saved me many hundreds of euros, as I've not had to go out and buy the back catalogue of: Saxon, Dream Theatre, Sigur Ros, Rage Against The Machine, Nine Inch Nails*, and a few other bands who I thought I'd "check out."

* - I already own the NIN back catalogue; The service is just so good that it saves me time to listen to it on Spotify.

And I stream what I don't... http://pandora.com/

I've been listening to pandora since it came out - I'm a huge fan. I got this email yesterday... pretty interesting. Apparently I like their free service *too* much:

I hope this email finds you enjoying a great summer Pandora soundtrack.

I'm writing with some important news. Please forgive the lengthy email; it requires some explaining.

First, I want to let you know that we've reached a resolution to the calamitous Internet radio royalty ruling of 2007. After more than two precarious years, we are finally on safe ground with a long-term agreement for survivable royalty rates â" thanks to the extraordinary efforts of our listeners who voiced an absolute avalanche of support for us on Capitol Hill. We are deeply thankful.

While we did the best we could to lower the rates, we are going to have to make an adjustment that will affect about 10% of our users who are our heaviest listeners. Specifically, we are going to begin limiting listening to 40 hours per month on the web. Because we have to pay royalty fees per song and per listener, it makes very heavy listeners hard to support on advertising alone. Most listeners will never hit this cap, but it seems that you might.

We hate the idea of capping anyone's usage, so we've been working to devise an alternative for listeners like you. We've come up with two solutions and we hope that one of them will work for you:

Your first option is to continue listening just as you have been and, if and when you reach the 40 hour limit in a given month, to pay just $0.99 for unlimited listening for the rest of that month. This isn't a subscription. You can pay by credit card and your card will be charged for just that one month. You'll be able to keep listening as much as you'd like for the remainder of the month. We hope this is relatively painless and affordable - the same price as a single song download.



Your second option is to upgrade to our premium version called Pandora One. Pandora One costs $36 per year. In addition to unlimited monthly listening and no advertising, Pandora One offers very high quality 192 Kbps streams, an elegant desktop application that eliminates the need for a browser, personalized skins for the Pandora player, and a number of other features: http://www.pandora.com/pandora_one.

If neither of these options works for you, I hope you'll keep listening to the free version - 40 hours each month will go a long way, especially if you're really careful about hitting pause when youâ(TM)re not listening. Weâ(TM)ll be sure to let you know if you start getting close to the limit, and weâ(TM)ve created a counter you can access to see how many hours youâ(TM)ve already used each month.

Weâ(TM)ll be implementing this change starting this month (July), Iâ(TM)d welcome your feedback and suggestions. The combination of our usage patterns and the "per song per listener" royalty cost creates a financial reality that we can't ignore...but we very much want you to continue listening for years to come.

Here's the email I received from Pandora: Hi, itâ(TM)s Tim - I hope this email finds you enjoying a great summer Pandora soundtrack. Iâ(TM)m writing with some important news. Please forgive the lengthy email; it requires some explaining. First, I want to let you know that weâ(TM)ve reached a resolution to the calamitous Internet radio royalty ruling of 2007. After more than two precarious years, we are finally on safe ground with a long-term agreement for survivable royalty rates â" thanks to the extraordinary efforts of our listeners who voiced an absolute avalanche of support for us on Capitol Hill. We are deeply thankful. While we did the best we could to lower the rates, we are going to have to make an adjustment that will affect about 10% of our users who are our heaviest listeners. Specifically, we are going to begin limiting listening to 40 hours per month on the web. Because we have to pay royalty fees per song and per listener, it makes very heavy listeners hard to support on advertising alone. Most listeners will never hit this cap, but it seems that you might. We hate the idea of capping anyone's usage, so we've been working to devise an alternative for listeners like you. We've come up with two solutions and we hope that one of them will work for you: Your first option is to continue listening just as you have been and, if and when you reach the 40 hour limit in a given month, to pay just $0.99 for unlimited listening for the rest of that month. This isn't a subscription. You can pay by credit card and your card will be charged for just that one month. You'll be able to keep listening as much as you'd like for the remainder of the month. We hope this is relatively painless and affordable - the same price as a single song download. Your second option is to upgrade to our premium version called Pandora One. Pandora One costs $36 per year. In addition to unlimited monthly listening and no advertising, Pandora One offers very high quality 192 Kbps streams, an elegant desktop application that eliminates the need for a browser, personalized skins for the Pandora player, and a number of other features: http://www.pandora.com/pandora_one. If neither of these options works for you, I hope you'll keep listening to the free version - 40 hours each month will go a long way, especially if you're really careful about hitting pause when youâ(TM)re not listening. Weâ(TM)ll be sure to let you know if you start getting close to the limit, and weâ(TM)ve created a counter you can access to see how many hours youâ(TM)ve already used each month. Weâ(TM)ll be implementing this change starting this month (July), Iâ(TM)d welcome your feedback and suggestions. The combination of our usage patterns and the "per song per listener" royalty cost creates a financial reality that we can't ignore...but we very much want you to continue listening for years to come. Please don't hesitate to email me back with your thoughts. Sincerely, Tim Founder

I got it too. Here's the email: http://broadcaster.pandora.com/dm?id=A4B6D0714169DA75E4FD0F99442E55C8050542759970026E

With this "streaming" model, you don't even possess the copy.

You guys seem to be confused. Streaming music on the internet = Internet Radio

Most internet radio is free. Think Pandora or last.fm. It wasn't long ago that all Pandora users got an email encouraging them to call or email their various politicians* to lower the royalty rates on internet radio (they wern't making money since the rates were so high). This is an example of a music company actually doing a GOOD THING, believe it or not.

This has nothing more to do with ownership rights / drm than royalty rates on AM/FM radio stations does.

* See: http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/archives/2007/03/riaas_new_royal.html

Music Genome

The big thing is international licensing. Pandora doesn't limit its services because it's xenophobic or because it thinks foreigners shouldn't be able to listen to online music---they do it because the copyright holders are nutty about controlling the markets abroad. I recall reading somewhere that the licensing costs generally don't justify the expenses for international audiences. (Something like this.) So you can either block access to international traffic, or you can try to make it profitable. Last.fm probably isn't losing much (relatively speaking) by losing its international audience, but apparently they still want to keep their service available overseas.

So, to the posters above, please stop complaining about discrimination. This policy is most likely just the trickle-down piss from the record companies.

Pandora Radio is a good one.

Nope. it's U.S. only , so as an alternative to a site which is now charging outside the us/uk/de its a bit pointless really.....

Totally slipped my mind that he might have been out of the country.

I must be more tired than I thought if I forgot what the story was about 5 minutes in...

Pandora Radio is a good one.

Nope. it's U.S. only , so as an alternative to a site which is now charging outside the us/uk/de its a bit pointless really.....

Pandora Radio is a good one.

Yes, it's a great alternative....

visiting the pandora.com homepage =

Dear Pandora Visitor,

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

We believe that you are in Australia (your IP address appears to be x.x.x.x). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com

Pandora Radio is a good one.

For quite a while after the rest of the world was blocked, Pandora continued offering their service to the UK. (See here)

The artist can choose the venue he performs at, it doesn't always have to be at the House of Blues in whatever city you're in.

The ones you are referring also are oftentimes closely connected with labels so if someone signs they have to perform at certain venues. Yea, if it's a really big venue it's going to cost more to get in and use, but there's also room for many more customers and more money for the band. Also, if you sign with a label for promotion, you're obviously going to lose a lot of your cut.

I can definitely get on the bandwagon of using law to improve the band's cut of live performance revenues though.

My problem is with, what I consider, the extortion that's been going on for years by record labels for a recording which is entirely over valued. And now their tirade against their customers.

In the end, they're just going to fail... recordings are just too easy and too cheap to produce and securely distribute. They need to adapt and provide us with super easy and inexpensive access or flounder and die.

http://www.hulu.com/
http://www.pandora.com/
http://www.netflix.com/

Who wants to pay a fee each and every month to listen to music, only to lose all their music should they stop paying?

That would be me.

I have an account with the Rhapsody online music service. For about $12 a month, I have access to over five million audio tracks. Five. Million.

Now, I would be the last person to claim that they are five million good audio tracks; there are plenty of lame covers and there is plenty of just music I hate. But that still leaves a vast amount of stuff I like, and I'm having fun exploring my way around. Recently I have been listening to the entire back catalog of Alan Parsons Project music; I found a few gems and a bunch of stuff I don't care about. Without buying anything, I figured out which songs I actually would want to get on a best-of compilation album.

I still buy CDs and I still buy music from Magnatune. But there is a place for music exploration using Rhapsody and Pandora.

If I wanted to be snide, I could comment that ITMS is vastly inferior to Rhapsody because you must pay a buck just to hear the whole song to find out whether it's worth buying or not. But why should we bash each others' preferences? There is plenty of room for both types of music service.

The worst thing about Rhapsody: buggy software. Really buggy. Maybe the Windows client is better, but I never use that.

The best thing about Rhapsody: Five. Million. Audio tracks.

steveha

Dear Tim Westergren and Pandora Staff, I have been listening to Pandora for well almost 2 years now. I have introduced all my friends to it, and many use it. Sometimes I have had to defend your product as the superior way to listen to music and introduce new artists and music into your life. I have generally been very happy with Pandora and the experience of being a 10 hour a day listener of Pandora at my office. Last night however I experienced something that I will say was an absolute shame. When I arrived at home from work my wife was listening to her Pandora âquick mixâ(TM), I could tell because of the diversity of the station she was listening too, when an advertisement played over the digital air ways. I asked out loud. âoeIs that an advertisement on Pandora?â to which my wife responded, âoePandora has been playing those for a while now.â I feel robbed! I have several times checked out the visual advertisements on your pages, I listen to Pandora in Google Chrome just so I can see and click on the advertisements that are otherwise blocked in my Firefox browser. I have bought music through / because of Pandora. Right now I am seriously re-thinking that. You have to have competitors out there who donâ(TM)t play advertisements. Some of my friends have mentioned them before, maybe it is time I do some new research on them. From what I understand you only have chosen to homogenize a certain set of users, I donâ(TM)t know why you have not chosen to attack me with audio pollution in between songs. But when you do I will stop listening to Pandora Radio. Right now introducing anyone else to Pandora is on hold in my book. Frankly if my wife keeps getting advertisements I am going to try to convince her to stop listening as well. I need to go apologize to many of my friends who I told them Pandora was the listeners dream. -Kurtis Kiesel Pandora User since 02/09/07 http://www.pandora.com/people/kieselk

Purple.com which is one of the rare ones that is what you'd expect, I believe I've even achieved the high score in the purple game, but it's hard to tell and that squirrel is quick.

Pandora has to be mentioned, I'm surprised nobody else has yet, but a service that plays music based upon what you enjoy, rather than popularity, artificial genres, names, etc.? If Pandora were a woman, I'd be a happily married man.

Second Life is truly unique. An online virtual world that is so unique, it's nearly impossible to define. It's not a game although games can be played there. It's not a social site, although you may socialize there. It's not a place to go make money although some earn livings there. You can waste tons of time there and feel you haven't spent enough.

What does any of this have to do with an online music service?

Streaming radio? Legislated into oblivion last year or the year before.

I listen to more and more streaming radio every day, thanks to http://pandora.com/ and http://last.fm/ . Sure there are limitations to what these services can provide, but it's far from oblivion. I hear new music every day, in the genre's that I like--- with far more diversity then anything I've heard on commercial radio.