A couple of days ago I received a notice from Pandora’s founder, Tim Westergren who broke the news - Pandora will no longer be accessible outside US. This is terrible news to me as a fan of their service.

Delivery of Pandora is based on proper licensing from the people who created the music - we have always believed in honoring the guidelines as determined by legislators and regulators, artists and songwriters, and the labels and publishers they work with. In the U.S. there is a federal statute that provides this license for all the music streamed on Pandora. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent license outside the U.S. and there is no global licensing organization to enable us to legitimately offer Pandora around the world. Other than in the U.K., we have not yet been able to make significant progress in our efforts to obtain a sufficient number of international licenses at terms that would enable us to run a viable business. The volume of listening on Pandora makes it a very expensive service to run. Streaming costs are very high, and since our inception, we have been making publishing and performance royalty payments for every song we play.

Until now, we have not been able to tell where a listener is based, relying only on zip code information provided upon registration. We are now able to recognize a listener’s country of origin based on the IP address from which they are accessing the service. Consequently, on May 3rd, we will begin blocking access to Pandora to listeners from your country. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

It is true that Pandora enforced the ‘Only US listeners’ rule from Day 1 through the postcode stated in registration. However I find it rather odd that the people who worked at Pandora were not aware of blocking countries by IP address. It came across as if they just found out the well-known technique and consequently implemented it as part of their principles. I have my doubts.

Similar legislations and regulations are applicable to the other Internet radio entities as well, but we do not see Live365 or last.fm taking the same precautions (as many users have noted likewise). The clues lead me to think that perhaps there was something else. From what I gathered, what’s happening is more likely due to financial constraints and that the steps taken were aimed at protecting their financial interests. Subtle implications were made in the email as I’ve bolded in the first paragraph. It hints that they are not able to shoulder the costs anymore. The only way out was to implement what they turned a blind eye to - IP blocking. Yes, compliance to legislative processes may play a role but as diversion to the flak from dissatisfied users.

Pandora is a business entity and as such it is doing what it should do. I commend them for the wise decision taken to remain financially able amidst troubling times to come (read: absurd increase in music royalty rates). Despite what I’ve suggested earlier, Pandora still garners a lot of respect from me as one of the best Internet radio services on the market. Hopefully, the decision will be reversed after the Internet Radio Equality Act is introduced.

I miss you Pandora :’(

Link to the Pandora blog entry on this matter

Tags: News, Pandora, Radio, Rumours, Web2.0

Response to “Pandora no more - the real reason” ( 6 )

Please spend a moment to join the discussion or trackback from your site

Featured Media