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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.
It is unprecedented. People will never pay for a service which also includes ads, unless you count magazines, newspapers, cable TV, movies, and riding the bus.
And yes, 99 cents per month for a service you use for dozens of hours is an outrage. The price jumped from $0.00 to $0.99 just today. If this trend continues, the service will cost over $300/month after just one year. Let's all get really mad!
Pandora was available in Canada.
Always Relevant: XKCD
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?
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
Jinks, you owe me a coke.
It seems typing the line "Let me be the first to say:" cost you being the first to say. The guy above you didn't use any fancy extra line breaks and got there first!
Probably because the scope of the agreement with copyright owners doesn't extend to use beyond the US; my understanding from what I've read about it is that it specifies a licensing fee that includes a portion of US revenues in exchange for allowing internet streaming of the music in the US.
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.
Find free books.
Why is it that we have to pay for a service that is ad based too? It might start with $0.99/month. Before you know it, it will be $5/month.. etc.
**The following is not a shameless plug, but it sure as shit reads like one.**
Why not just upgrade to their 'Pandora One' subscription plan for $36/year ($3/month)? It eliminates ads entirely, includes unlimited listening, higher-quality 192 kbps streams, and some other random stuff. Doesn't seem like a bad deal to me.
Yeah! Like .... radio, and network television, and google... and.
1368127 is prime!
Do none of you use http://www.slacker.com/? I started with Pandora, but I find Slacker far superior. It is free with ads and has a paid subscription with no ads. The channels are more professionally programmed, so I don't get the odd song thrown in that just doesn't fit the chosen genre in the least.
My primary concern with low-cost services, is that of transactional security. I don't want to expose my CC to compromise over only 1$. 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.
I got it too. Here's the email: http://broadcaster.pandora.com/dm?id=A4B6D0714169DA75E4FD0F99442E55C8050542759970026E
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
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
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.
As a top ten percent user, this is it, the final straw. I'll pay the whole $3 a month for premium service. I hope they're happy, they've converted me from a non-paying user to a paid subscriber.
I hit the 40 hours probably the first week of every month, I require a soundtrack to be able to program, and Pandora works wonders for me.