Today we have some bad news for the millions of users that enjoy Pandora free online radio streaming. It looks like the personalized radio service will soon be adding limits to us mobile users. For those that enjoy the mobile app on Android you might want to listen up. According to new reports mobile users will be limited to 40 hours of streaming a month. After that they’ll have to pony up some cash to keep listening.
Due to rising royalty costs for all the music Pandora has to offer, the service is going to be adding some caps and restrictions to all of us Android-toting listeners. Not just Android, but all mobile users will now be put on a limit. It isn’t all bad news however, as their CEO had some interesting things to say regarding their users.
Pandora founder Tim Westergren explained the change in a recent blog post, claiming that royalty costs have increased over 25% in the past 3 years, not to mention 9% higher in 2013 alone. So they’ll sadly be going against their “mission” of offering free unlimited streaming, and be adding a few small limits.
The good news here being that Tim states the average user doesn’t go beyond 20 hours of streaming in a months period, and that only 4% of their user base actually streams more than 40 hours per month. So for those that do, once you meet that 40 hour limit you’ll have to pay $0.99 to finish out the month. That or pay the monthly fee to become a premium user – which also removes ads. Overall this shouldn’t be a cause of concern for most customers, but some of you might want to decide if Pandora is still right for you.
Charge them for fewer hours! I pay the tiny annual fee to listen without commercials (which is more than worth it). Get the freeloaders off of my bandwidth, or annoy them with more commercials so they pay for their entertainment.
Have fun after they go bankrupt because too many freeloaders changed service…
Just subscribed because I’ve enjoyed their service on my Sonos system. It is good value too when compared to the purchase cost for music and the ability to listen on multiple devices is useful.
c’mon. if you can’t pay the.99¢ to finish up the month for over 40 hours for Premium services you have issues. 🙂