Bad News For Those Of Us Who Love Free Music

The International Business Times is reporting today that rising royalty costs will cause the free music site Pandora to limit free listening to 40 hours a month. That works out to a little more than one hour a day. Pandora is lobbying Congress to pass the Internet Radio Fairness Act which would change the way that royalties are paid to artists.

Listeners will have alternatives to the 40-hours-a-month program–99 cents for unlimited listening for the remainder of the month, a subscription to Pandora One for unlimited listening and no advertising.

The article concludes:

“The streaming business is obviously growing and booming. It’s north of a billion-dollar business now,” Alex Luke, executive vice president of A&R for the Capitol Label Group, whose artists include the Beatles, Katy Perry and Coldplay, told RS (Rolling Stone) in a previous interview. “But it’s still in its infancy.”

I enjoy Pandora and hope they will continue to provide free Internet music.Enhanced by Zemanta