Popular Web radio giant Pandora implements ads
There has been quite a buzz today over the appearance of ads on Pandora’s Web radio streams. Pandora has been trying to stay afloat with super-high music licensing fees and felt the need to include a minor number of audio ads between some songs.
We have mentioned numerous times how we love Pandora and use it all the time, both at the desktop and on the iPhone. We say to Pandora- do what you have to do to keep us listening to your fantastic streaming music. We’ll support you all the way.
You can pay for a premium Pandora service for $36 per year that is ad-free. The sad part is that until this flap about the ads I didn’t realize there was a paid service available. I would gladly pony up that kind of dough to keep Pandora afloat.
(via TechCrunch)
Guess they didn’t leave an ad in the free version notifying people that there was an ad-free paid version available.
Audio ads aren’t new, but they are new to the iPhone platform. They introduced them on the Sonos and/or Squeezebox products. They do seem less frequent than the ads on Slacker, but I’ve been spending most of my time with Slacker recently. Especially since I discovered they have an explicit comedy channel.
I wonder if the paid version lets you skip songs indefinitely. I don’t mind the ads that much, but the problem with pay radio in the past was that they either went bust, increased their low rates, or made changes later that ruined the listening experience.
I used to love listening to cyberadio2000 and launchcast plus. One went bust and the other took away features that made it great.
Luscious, Pandora has technology that only plays music like other music you indicate you like. I can’t remember the last time Pandora played a song I wanted to skip. That technology is what sets them apart from other web radio stations.
Slacker also lets you rate and band artists/songs.
I would pay an annual fee if they would release a decent VGA WM client.
I’m boycotting Pandora. As much as I loved the service, I’m furious that my husband, an iPhone user on AT&T wireless’s network can access the app for free, while I, a WinMo phone user, must pay a $7.99 per month subscription fee ON THE SAME NETWORK.
I find this discrimination really, really annoying. A further example is how iPhone users can access AT&T wi-fi hotspots for free, but other AT&T wireless users with wi-fi capable phones can not. I just don’t get it. It makes me want to dump their service.
Dave Zatz, rating is not how Pandora works. They have the music genome technology that can take any song and accurately build a playlist that is amazingly like your song. Nobody else can do it the way Pandora does and why they are so popular.
Pandora makes me feel like I’m in a constant music video!