Over the past few months Pandora has been restructuring their current business model which allows customers to have unlimited-music based on ad-supported interruptions. It has now been confirmed that the company will no longer support that model at all, instead it is putting new restrictions on free content.
The problem is the growing cost of royalties and the high-cost of licensing music. Customers here in the United States will be limited to just 40 hours a month on mobile devices. If you usually listen to Pandora Radio on desktop computers than this should not change your listening habits. Desktop users will still enjoy the usual unlimited streaming service with standard advertisement interruptions.
Pandora does offer a paid subscription service called ‘Pandora One’, those customers will still maintain their current service as well. This change is only targeting mobile users, who will now be confronted with an option to pay $.99 with an in-app purchase to unlock the music-stream for the remaining month. This new change will go into effect on March 1, 2013.
