Pandora online radio gets audio ads
By Nic, 22 January 2009 - 08:53 5 comments
The world's most popular online radio service, Pandora, has been struggling to pay for its online radio royalty fees and now, to survive, Pandora has added 15-second ads between songs.
Pandora is known for being the radio station that is highly customizable and caters to your tastes with help from the Music Genome Project. Since it's creation, Pandora has been a free service available on the Internet and then recently on the iPhone. There were originally only a few ads, and those came from the Web page. And now they have been injected into the actual audio.
The Daily Geek has reported that an ad plays after 10 songs, and then again after 20, and only for some users. "The fears people have about it overtaking the listening experience are unfounded," said Pandora founder and CEO Tim Westergren in a phone interview with the Press Democrat on Tuesday. "It's going to be a fraction of what you hear on broadcast radio."
News source: iWinUX
Comments (5)
MightyJordan - 22 January 2009 - 10:25
I'm impressed that they lasted for so long without ads.
+BeLGaRaTh - 22 January 2009 - 17:07
But how would you click them, and would an ad blocker block them :P
Nic - 22 January 2009 - 18:52
I listened to Pandora for over 3 hours last night while I was up doing random forum shenanigans and working on some homework, and I have yet to encounter an ad. Works for me!
Justin- - 23 January 2009 - 04:59
I honestly like Last.fm better because it knows my preferences better than Pandora does. Though, the service isn't that bad ... also, I can skip a lot more songs than I can on Pandora an hour.
That's just my two cents though.
bod - 24 January 2009 - 07:26
"The world's most popular online radio service"
I thought that it wasn't available outside the US?