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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
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.
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.
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"
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.