I love Pandora

It's very sad to receive an email from my favorite music discovery service telling me they can't offer the service in Holland. It is unbelievable that after so many years a service like this, letting millions of people enjoy new music, still stumbles upon these issues. I wonder when this industry will actively support this kind of service and recognize the value of music discovery.

 

Dear Pandora   listener,    Today we have   some extremely disappointing news to share with you. Due to international   licensing constraints, we are deeply, deeply sorry to say that we must begin   proactively preventing access to Pandora's streaming service for most   countries outside of the U.S.   It is difficult   to convey just how disappointing this is for us. Our vision remains to   eventually make Pandora a truly global service, but for the time being, we   can no longer continue as we have been. As a small company, the best chance   we have of realizing our dream of Pandora all around the world is to grow as   the licensing landscape allows.   We show   your IP address is '86.87.111.4', which indicates you are listening from   Netherlands. If   you believe you are seeing this by mistake, we offer our sincere apologies   and ask that you please reply to this email.       Delivery of   Pandora is based on proper licensing from the people who created the music -   we have always believed in honoring the guidelines as determined by   legislators and regulators, artists and songwriters, and the labels and   publishers they work with. In the U.S. there is a federal statute that   provides this license for all the music streamed on Pandora. Unfortunately,   there is no equivalent license outside the U.S. and there is no global   licensing organization to enable us to legitimately offer Pandora around the   world. Other than in the U.K., we have not yet been able to make significant   progress in our efforts to obtain a sufficient number of international   licenses at terms that would enable us to run a viable business. The volume   of listening on Pandora makes it a very expensive service to run. Streaming   costs are very high, and since our inception, we have been making publishing   and performance royalty payments for every song we play.   Until now, we   have not been able to tell where a listener is based, relying only on zip   code information provided upon registration. We are now able to recognize a   listener's country of origin based on the IP address from which they are   accessing the service. Consequently, on May 3rd, we will begin blocking   access to Pandora to listeners from your country. We are very sad to have to   do this, but there is no other alternative.   We will be   posting updates on our blog regarding   our ongoing effort to launch in other countries, so please stay in touch. We   will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and   songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be   waiting for you. We deeply share your sense of disappointment and greatly   appreciate your understanding.      -Tim Westergren   (Pandora founder)   This is a one time account message

Comments

[Tim Westergren]

Thanks for posting about this - and I'm so sorry we had to do this. I have very fond memories of biking around Holland as a young teenager...

I hope we'll be back soon. For now we need to abide by the existing laws.

Cheers. Tim (Founder)

[Rico]

I got one of those emails too. What I'm really wondering about is how last.fm is going to handle with these new rules though.

[Martijn]

It's an issue related to all existing and future music services. The owners of the rights should be acting more pro-active on this and empower the likes of Pandora. Soon IIP will anounce a solution for this issue. It's a technology solution and will only work if the laws make it feasible to run a service like this. My question to Tim is: What would be the ideal world to run Pandora and make ip-owners happy enough to make that happen?