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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."
Pandora was available in Canada.
Piracy Tips for Consumers, I was reading the "royalty rates" link and saw that the RIAA was behind it, so I went to their website and found this jewel.
Of note: Watch for Compilations that are "Too Good to Be True". Why are they too good to be true? If customers would want that compilation why haven't you sold it to them?
Even better: Trust your ear: The sound quality of pirate CDs is often poor or inconsistent. It is a freaking digital copy, it is the exact same quality! Does anyone actually believe this stuff?
I for one will not be using Pandora anymore if they decide that I ought to be charged. I am clearly not at all opposed to the fee, 99 cents is dirt cheap for what you get from Pandora. What worries me about all this micropayment nonsense is having to give out my credit card number ALL THE FRAKKIN TIME. I hate giving out my CC number. This is an especially large concern for Windows users, where keyloggers are rampant. When people get more and more used to giving out their CC numbers, you can expect phishing to become even more prevalent than it already is. I don't want to have to pay for everything I see and use on the web. It is obnoxious. Even if the price is more than worth it in the actual dollars and cents definition of the word, it is still not worth HAVING to pay for it. At least that is my $0.02 (which you all now owe me btw, please reply with your credit card number).
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
A thought about this. I know that the rates charged by credit card companies to process a transaction tend to be very high. Does anyone know how the pricing structure works? How much of the final transaction will actually be paid to Pandora?
This comes on the same day that an agreement was announced that lowers royalty payments for internet radio stations. The original plan called for royalties of 0.19 cents per streamed song. The new plan sets royalties for large stations at 25% of revenue or .14 cents/song (whichever is greater). Small stations will pay $25,000/yr or 12-14% of revenue (whichever is greater). It sounds like it's still going to be impossible for individuals to set up stations as a hobby, which I guess it was practical to do at one point, but I'm guessing that a lot of college radio stations might find it cheaper to pay the $25k/yr than to maintain an FM broadcast station.
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Not sure about that. I can't listen at work anymore, but I used to have Pandora on all day. You could skip something like 3 songs in a 15 minute period or 6 songs an hour. And with the rating system you could filter out bad music rather easily. And if you ever just got tired of a song there is the "ZZZ" button to remove the song from your play list for 30 days.
Pandora had it's issues. Like I hate listening to live recordings, which I know is one of the tags that they mark songs with. But I couldn't just set that as a preference. Instead I have to give all live performances a thumbs down and hope that their engine is smart enough to realize that I just rated down a band I like because that specific song was live.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Do none of you use http://www.slacker.com/? I started with Pandora, but I find Slacker far superior. It is free with ads and has a paid subscription with no ads. The channels are more professionally programmed, so I don't get the odd song thrown in that just doesn't fit the chosen genre in the least.
the reason people on the net generally refuse to pay 0.99 for things (like porn sites) is not thrift, but fear. Usually, it's a scam. Pandora is not a scam, so I'll gladly pay.
My primary concern with low-cost services, is that of transactional security. I don't want to expose my CC to compromise over only 1$. Paypal is just as bad. if I subscribe to 100 1$ services per month, how much does that increase my exposure, vs one transaction for 100$? low cost webservices may be the answer to making money online, but I'm not here so a provider can make a buck.
It's because ad supported doesn't actually work for any decent-sized service.
"Traditionnal" web ads that users have to click for them to generate revenue for the site may not work, but I think advertisers are (or will be) paying good money for one of Spotify's audio ads (in between songs, just like on radio). And they are more annoying than blockable text/image/flash ads, so they are a "better" insentive for the user to suscribe to the service (or to switch service, but if they manage to stay ahead of the competition most users will pay or continue waiting through the ads I guess).
I know there must be a good, albeit esoteric explanation for this, but the economics behind this decision are baffling to me. One would think that if Pandora had a profitable business model, then profit and listeners' usage of their service should be positively correlated; i.e., the more I listen, the more profit Pandora makes from advertising. However, if they're encouraging people to use the service less, the obvious explanation would be that usage and profit are negatively correlated; i.e., Pandora would be hemorraging money.
It's as if Sony were to suddenly decide to cap the number of PS3's you can buy to limit their losses...
Those guys pretty much exist to sell ads, and with the exception of Google, their revenues have been shrinking for decades. Additionally, with the traditional media sources, your ad revenue was augmented by regional local advertising on which you hold a geographic monopoly: that does not hold true for the internet, so the ads are much less lucrative.
Google makes up for it with an extremely high ability to target the ads, and by doing insane volume. Other sites have slim pickings in comparison.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Vinyl level sound is infinite kbps because it's analog, there are no frames. Digital has better dynamic range, but for frequency reproduction nothing can touch analog. That being said, you get more predictable results with digital, a better noise floor, and the aforementioned dynamic range.
The "vinyl level" sound is much higher quality in at least one measurable respect, bass reproduction. That's why in a world class club, with a world class DJ, they will be using vinyl even if nobody there but the DJ can tell the difference or cares... Some DJ's are moving to CD's but there are still a large number using vinyl precisely for this reason. Deep, round, rich bass.
-Viz
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.