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Pandora Stabilizes, No Longer Completely Free
AbyssWyrm writes "Yesterday, Pandora founder Tim Westergren announced that the music service was on safe ground once again, but will no longer be free for all users. Instead, it will be really cheap — for those with a free account, there will be a cap of 40 hours per month, and a user may pay a one-time fee of $0.99 to resume unlimited listening to music for a month. According to the blog entry, this will affect the top 10% of listeners. Certainly not a bad deal considering the price, and I suspect that Pandora is one of few free internet resources whose users are loyal enough to pay a small fee to keep it afloat. Pandora's future had been uncertain ever since the royalty rates for internet radio were increased in 2007."
I guess a one time fee of $0.99 isn't too much to ask. I do have over that with the change in my pocket from my two coffees I go this morning.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Always Relevant: XKCD
It's because ad supported doesn't actually work for any decent-sized service.
TANSTAAFL. So suck it up and pay something if you enjoy it.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Not to be a terrible pedant, but if you pay a "one time fee" to get unlimited listening each month, it's not a one-time fee. It's a monthly fee. It just has a very low subscription cost.
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
Don't hate pandora for this. Hate the record labels. Pandora is just trying to survive, but the RIAA is a bunch of bastards who want to milk everyone for money.
'Number-memorizing Chinese people.'-Anon
Sounds like someone's never heard a CD burnt from 128kbps MP3's.
--- Mr. DOS
Yeah! Like .... radio, and network television, and google... and.
1368127 is prime!
There's an even worse one in there. How about:
Furthermore, if the record label listed is a company you've never heard of, that should be another warning sign.
That sounds to me like it's bordering on an anti-trust violation, smearing the smaller non-RIAA music labels as illegitimate and illegal. I haven't bought any RIAA CDs in years because they've been acting like dickwads, but even before they started acting like dickwads most of the CDs I bought *were* from record labels I'd never heard of. I did buy some "top 40 pop" stuff, but for the most part the RIAA labels just didn't carry what I wanted, and the "unheard of" indie labels did.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Maybe I'm over-looking something here, but couldn't you just create additional free accounts? Yes, I'm that cheap...
Welcome to 2009... Every creditor everywhere offers choices which accomodate online security concerns. For example, one time use numbers for a transaction. There are other options also. Your fear is uninformed.
Overclockers
Yes, but the whole point of Pandora is the 'music genome project' engine. I like being introduced to songs with similar attributes, not just of a similar genre or era. Seriously, I told Pandora I liked certain Jack Johnson songs and was introduced to artists that I would have never normally explored (i.e. heavy metal bands doing acoustic numbers or world music artists).
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
one-time fee of $0.99 to resume unlimited listening to music for a month
How is it you pay a one time fee for a monthly service?
Should it be:
-- OR --
Respect the Constitution
Too Good To Be True == 200 tracks for $2. They didn't sell that because they don't want to give stuff away so cheaply. How is that hard to understand?
Maybe, maybe not. I've never heard a pirate CD, but I've seen plenty of pirate DVDs. Some are direct digital copies of the original and look great, plenty are just burned torrent downloads (and so have compression artifacts everywhere). Some are screen cams. I'm sure the same holds for audio.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Sorry about replying to myself, but I just found another gem:
Music pirates aren't in the music business, they are in the plastics business. They buy and sell plastic and get consumers to pay them 10 to 20 times their cost for a blank disc by simply loading that plastic up with stolen music.
That argument applies almost verbatim to the music industry itself.
What do you mean ripping off? iTunes charges you $0.99 for a song you then own (without DRM). Pandora charges you $0.99 for a stream you are not allowed to record and can't take with you on your MP3 player. They are two different business models. One is a store, the other one is a radio station.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
If you get that much value out of the service why not just pay the $1/month?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It's the start of the slippery slope.
So you'd rather them be unable to come back rather than having to chip in 99 cents because otherwise they won't be able to afford the licensing fees?
Compare cable bills from the 80s to today. $10 package back then is now around $80. We have more adverts, bigger channel logos, obnoxious animated or video overlays showing other programming over the top of whatever you're watching, and channels constantly being spun off into other sub-packages that cost more in monthly fees to get them back.
Waaaaaaaaaah. Poor baby.
Maybe when you grow up you'll have to start paying for services rather than stealing them, and then you'll discover pricing always vastly outstrips inflation increases.
I don't steal anything now or have in the past. I pay for everything I get. To complain about 99 cents for listening to over 40 hours of music from the service so they can cover their licensing fees is laughable. I love the condescension to when you're the one who is tossing out the "WAAAH I HAVE TO PAY FOR THINGS" argument not me.
You're an idiot. 192 is 'higher quality' than 128. That's how adjectives work.
High quality != higher quality
When I first saw the headline, I thought "Oh shit - one of the few free music apps that works perfectly and actually has good content is now going to be ruined;" not because I have any objection to paying a fair price for things, but because historically with free music sites/services online, once money becomes involved they change, and usually not for the better.
However, I find this pricing model pretty appropriate - if you are listening over 40 hours a month, 99 cents is a small price to pay to support the site. This doesn't look to me like a way to exploit their userbase for huge economic gains, rather, it looks like a site doing what they need to do to survive without taking advantage of their user base.
If they raise it substantially, quickly - I might feel differently, but from what I understand they were having to deal with this seems like a pretty good way to go - managable and fair, and only affecting heavy users.