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Pandora Internet Radio May Go Silent in 2010

by Tim Stevens on August 19, 2008 at 08:01 AM

Pandora Internet Radio May Go Silent in 2010
If you're the kind of music lover who knows what you like but have a hard time finding new bands to add to your collection, Pandora is the service for you. It lets you pick bands you like, and then listen in to a custom radio station created around your tastes. Unfortunately, though, Web radio stations like Pandora may be going offline for good in 2010 thanks to higher royalty fees that may mean the end of Internet radio.

Pandora is currently paying 70-percent of its royalties out to licensing fees, but in 2010 those fees are set to more than triple, up to 19/100 of a cent from 8/100 for each track played. That may not sound like much, but when you consider that terrestrial radio stations don't pay a thing for the right to broadcast music, and that Pandora has thousands of custom channels all playing at once, you can see why the company is feeling somewhat spurned by the music industry. There's hope that the fees will be revised before they go into effect in 2010, but hurt feelings has never stopped the recording industry from doing whatever it wants before. [From: Download Squad]

Tags: internet radio, InternetRadio, pandora, streaming

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