[Laminar]

I received an email today:

Hi, it’s Tim -

I hope this email finds you enjoying a great summer filled with music from Pandora.

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 – 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 $0.99 for an unlimited number of hours for the rest of that month. This isn't a subscription. We'll charge your credit card for just that one month and 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 you’re not listening. We’ll be sure to let you know if you start getting close to the limit, and we’ve created a counter you can access to see how many hours you’ve already used each month.

We’ll be implementing this change starting this month (July), I’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_signature.jpg

Tim
Founder

Summary-
You listen to Pandora a lot and cost us too much money. Two choices - after listening for 40 hours, pay $0.99 for unlimited access for the rest of the month, or subscribe for $36/year.

Between work and home, I probably listen to Pandora for 9-10 hours a day, so I'm going to hit the barrier pretty early on. Does anyone else listen this much? Thoughts?

[turtle777]

I don't get it.

12x$0.99 = $11.88

Why would anyone pay $36 upfront for a whole year ?

I guess you get higher quality for it, right ?

-t

[Chuckit]

10 hours a day on Pandora? Geez, I have an iPod.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

I don't get it.

12x$0.99 = $11.88

Why would anyone pay $36 upfront for a whole year ?

I guess you get higher quality for it, right ?

-t

Apparently: Higher quality streams, no advertising and not having to keep the same browser open all the time to keep the stream going.

[Dakar V]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

10 hours a day on Pandora? Geez, I have an iPod.

Yeah, but I don't think Laminar has $30000 to fill an iPod.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

I don't get it.

12x$0.99 = $11.88

Why would anyone pay $36 upfront for a whole year ?

I guess you get higher quality for it, right ?

-t

Yeah, higher quality (192kbps instead of 64 or 96), no ads (they're rare but they've show up more in the past month or two), and separate Pandora player.

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

10 hours a day on Pandora? Geez, I have an iPod.

I have a pretty short attention span when it comes to music, so paying for it per song/album isn't a financially viable option for me when I'll get bored of it in month or three. I have 16 some gigs in my iTunes library, but I'd rather listen to new stuff, and Pandora has helped me find a lot of new songs/artists that I like.

[Chuckit]

Yes, but I also don't need half a year's worth of totally unique music on my iPod.

[shifuimam]

I think this makes sense - 99 cents USD per month for unlimited music is pretty damn cheap.

I wonder how that will affect my Livio Pandora radio...

[Shaddim]

My wife told me about this, since she listens to Pandora all the time (6-8 hrs /day). I think she went ahead and bought a year of Pandora One. Seems like a good deal for what she gets.

[::maroma::]

Since its either this, or Pandora goes away forever, I'm okay with it. I don't listen to Pandora enough to have to pay the .99, but I still listen to it almost every day. Just in smaller doses.

[reader50]

When they play songs that are in the public domain, those minutes should not count against the 40 hours per month. The pro-copyright people keep forgetting to mention that - they do * not * own all the music out there.

[Chuckit]

How many recordings on Pandora are in the public domain? Even if a song is, the artist you are listening to almost certainly has a copyright on that recording.

[OldManMac]

I just signed up for the $36/year program. It's $3/month, which won't break me, and I can listen all I want. I also tried the Sirius app on my iPhone, but they want $12.95/month to subscribe! Not going to do it.

[besson3c]

Is Last.Fm affected as well?

[RAILhead]

Not bad pricing to me -- but I don't listen that much, so I probably won't ever hit the cap.

[Laminar]

Well, I was careful to pause when I wasn't listening, I didn't spend much time in the garage, and I took off for a while on a business trip, so I managed to make it this far until I hit the cap.

I went ahead and upgraded to Pandora One for the year. I think I'll celebrate by skipping seven songs in a row.

[Phileas]

Thing is, in order to run a business it has to make money. In this age of "free" that often gets forgotten. YouTube for example made a very substantial loss last year. Somebody has to make the money it costs to keep the service running elsewhere.

I think $3 a month for what pandora offers is extremely fair.

[besson3c]

No last.fm users here, huh? There is even an OS X client.

I personally prefer the Pandora selection, but my music tastes are unusual.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

No last.fm users here, huh? There is even an OS X client.

I use last.fm.

Haven't heard anything about them changing their model.

-t

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

No last.fm users here, huh? There is even an OS X client.

There's a whole multi-page thread on it.

Originally Posted by Phileas 

Thing is, in order to run a business it has to make money. In this age of "free" that often gets forgotten.

I thought that's what ads were for. I'm glad Hulu is still free.

I think $3 a month for what pandora offers is extremely fair.

I agree.