I would go nuts if I couldn't listen to music at work. Very quickly. But luckily I have Pandora to dull the pain of being a drone. Or had Pandora rather.

Due to the music industry and corporate douchebags, webcasters/webradio services are now subject to REDONKULOUS licensing fees. Pandora managed to cut a deal with these soulless creatures – allowing them to continue to offer their great, FREE, music service… but at the cost of limiting free listening to 40 hours a month. So now I'm switching between pandora and last.fm for all my music needs.

Pandora sent me this email a few days ago telling me that I can listen to music again!

Hey, Tim here –

We're very sorry about limiting your listening last month – I'm writing to let you know that, starting today you can listen to the free version of Pandora again. We hope you'll come back!

Sorry if this limit is driving you nuts – it's the last thing we want to do, but it's the economic reality of streaming. We pay royalties for every song we play, which we feel good about, but it means that for our most consistent listeners, like you, advertising revenues don't cover the costs. If you want to listen more than 40 hours a month, we've come up with two options:

* For unlimited, ad-free listening, along with a bunch of other cool features, you can upgrade to Pandora One.

OR…

* If you run out of hours in any given month, you can pay $.99 to listen for the rest of the month (you'll still have advertising). This is a one-time fee: we won't charge your credit card again.

We really hope one of these options works for you. To check on how many hours you have remaining, just click the 'account' link above the Pandora tuner. There's also more information on our blog.

Thanks again for listening and, I hope, welcome back!
Tim's Signature

Tim Westergren
Founder
Pandora

I don't know why.. but this email makes me kinda grumpy. Oh well.

Tags: online music, pandora, pandora limit, streaming, web radio, webradio