Boxing out Pandora music fans

Pandora, an Internet service that lets people listen to streaming music, is shutting its service to non-U.S. listeners, according to several reports.

The ban is due to new regulations that will raise royalty fees that Webcasters must pay to record labels, Pandora founder Tim Westergren told The Register. The ban, he said, "follows months of pressure from record labels."

Pandora representatives told Techcrunch that they have been working on obtaining international licenses for nearly two years and are close to deals in the U.K. and Canada.

The service has always been intended for U.S. users, but until now, all that was required to sign up was a ZIP code. Now the site will block IP addresses located outside the States.

Blog community response:

"Anyone who's used Pandora for more than about five minutes realizes what a great service it is for the entire recording industry. It really does a good job of recommending new music to listeners -- the type of new music that fits in with what they like, and that they're much more likely to support with money. However, rather than recognizing the numerous ways that Pandora can grow their overall market, the recording industry has to shut it down since it won't pay them even more than they're already being paid. This harms the recording industry in numerous ways, and it's amazing they haven't figured that out yet."
--Techdirt

"The company's decision comes in the wake of a stupid decision by the U.S. Congress to slap far-too-high royalty rates on streaming music - rates that are much higher than traditional and satellite radio. And you wonder why Web-savvy consumers, who love being able to discover lots of new music online, are still being tempted by P2P services!"
--Mark Evans

"Pandora surely did not decided for themselves to limit their services which leads to the question why the Music Industry is trying everything to stop people from listening to music which they probably would have bought. But you won't buy something that you don't know, don't you think ? Did not think the Music Industry could get any lower than they already are. They apparently can."
--Ghacks.net

[erick gammon]

Every time a new way of delivering music shows up the RIAA tries to make su

If company's like Pandora are allowed to keep streaming music it will mean the end of the industry as we know it.

The big labels know that any service bringing potentially thousands of competitors into a streaming station where they can only offer a handful of choices will only reduce the amount of streaming their own bands ever get. People like Pandora bring up content based on what the user wants not the handful of bands most big labels want to force down our throats.

The RIAA represents big labels for the most part and their agenda is purely monopolistic. They do not want any of us to discover the vast universe of music represented by the rest of the worlds musical artist. Why, because there is nothing in it for them.

If the people have a choice between an artist representing themselves or a corporatist industry representing mostly just money, I believe The RIAA understands they will ultimately fail. The amount of musical diversity alone has left big labels trying to fill several genres of music with far too few bands.

The Internet has brought small independent musical artists who would normally be thought of as purely local into the mainstream. Eventually services like Pandora will have to include smaller artists right alongside the RIAA limited choices. At that point Big Music will simply be overwhelmed by the sheer number of competitors. In such a paradigm The big music industry would lose out.

The RIAA will never allow people to choose their own music as long as they are the only outlet for music in America, If you are tired of Musical art being such an INDUSTRY then boycott the RIAA and all of its artist until they disappear.