I whacked the computer and Pandora still isn't working

by David Spark on June 26, 2007

Today marks a day of Web radio silence for U.S. companies being forced massive price hikes to stream Internet radio. Pandora, an Internet radio station I listen to often, because it’s AWESOME, has chosen to participate. Go to the site today and you’ll see a letter explaining why they’re not streaming today. Pandora is doing so well that it could actually weather the storm of these severe price increases (about 300% over previous prices), but its competitors won’t and they’ll have to go out to business. For Pandora it’s actually good to keep the competition around because it raises the overall awareness of Internet radio as an alternative medium from terrrestrial radio.

The event is being organized by the SaveNetRadio coalition in which RealNetworks, Yahoo!, and Viacom are members. Interestingly, neither RealNetworks nor Yahoo! Music are participating in this day of silence.

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  • http://listenist.wordpress.com/ listenist

    Actually, it looks like Pandora may in fact be in even worse shape than any other internet radio station.

    Marc Fisher of the Washington Post writes:

    “And pandora.com, which creates a unique radio station for every one of its many thousands of visitors (the service uses a recommendation engine to select music based on your existing preferences), would face the prospect of having to pay separate royalties for each of its customers–an immediate death knell.”

    That’s taken from his blog- http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/

    This royalty increase is a terrifying prospect, and the folks behind it are certainly not looking to protect artists as they claim- they’re protecting the hegemony of the major record labels and the dying, boring, corrupted terrestrial radio outlets.

    Thanks for joining the chorus of voices against this rate hike.

  • admin

    Of course Pandora is going to get hurt because 300% hike on any payment hurts anyone. The charge that Marc Fisher speaks of I believe is the same charge everyone is concerned about. I don’t think it’s unique. Or am I wrong here.

    And yes, this royalty increase is to protect the record labels and the terrestrial radio stations. Both are hurting and they’re desperately trying to protect their properties.

  • matt graves

    hey david — rhapsody actually did participate in the day of silence yesterday, but we only did so on the free radio stations we offer via the web-based version of rhapsody. we didn’t shut off music for our paying customers; it raised too many issues of potentially angering people who pay us each month for an always-on service and expect to get what they pay for. just wanted to clarify — i run PR for rhapsody, based here in sf.

    matt

  • admin

    Hey Matt:

    I’m not a paying customer of Rhapsody, but I use the free client version of Rhapsody and the free version of the client tool was working for me yesterday.

    As for shutting down for paying customers, I agree that would have been a really bad idea. Was there a way to shut down the client for the free customers and not the paying customers?

    David

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