Pandora's Box

Is anyone besides me OBSESSED with Pandora? I love it. I have about 10 stations that I switch between while I am at work. Chill hippy music? Check. Really bad 1980s music? Got that too.

My Pandora Station....I think I was listening to my Euro Trash music when I took this screen shot.

Anyway, until earlier today, Pandora was in danger of being shut down. (The horror! You can read about it here -- but to sum it up, it involves royalty payments with music labels.) However, it just reached an agreement with SoundExchange (a non-profit group that works with the U. S. Copyright Office to collect royalty payments for online music) that changes the manner by which Pandora (and sites like it) make royalty payments. It's a little complicated, but TechCrunch sums it up pretty well:

The key part of the resolution involves SoundExchange agreeing to a 40-50% reduction in the per-song-per-listener rates. In exchange, Pandora is giving up either 25% of its U.S. revenue or the new per-song-per-listener rate, whichever is higher. This agreement runs through 2015.

That second part (the "new per-song-per-listener rate" and "whichever is higher") is important -- because these rates are pretty heavy on the wallet, Pandora is implementing a 40 hour per month usage cap on users. For most people, it's not a biggie -- in fact, it only impacts 10% of Pandora's heaviest listeners. But guess what? I'm one of the 10%! In fact, I got an email today from Tim Westergren, Pandora's founder, that said this:

While we did the best we could to lower the rates, we are going to have to make an adjustment that will affect about 10% of our users who are our heaviest listeners. Specifically, we are going to begin limiting listening to 40 hours per month on the web. Because we have to pay royalty fees per song and per listener, it makes very heavy listeners hard to support on advertising alone. Most listeners will never hit this cap, but it seems that you might.

Wow...I had no idea I was listening to that much music. Anyway, I'll still be able to get my Pandora fix pretty easily -- once I reach my 40 hour limit, I simply pay $.99 to continue listening to unlimited music for the rest of the month. Seems like a sweet deal to me, and well worth the buck. After all, Pandora has introduced me to a ton of new artists and genres....artists and genres I wouldn't have been exposed to had I just been listening to my iPod, cds, or (heaven forbid) the whirl of my computer.

Anyone else a crazy Pandora addict? Or am I the only one? If they had Pandora's Anonymous, I would so have to join....