Pandora Shuts Down in the UK

As did many others, on Monday I got an email from Pandora, my preferred internet radio station, telling me the following:

" in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible"

It appears that both the PPL and the MCPS/PRS Alliance have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so one of the best internet radio stations has had to close.

This seems to have happened just at the same time as DRM and digital copywright legislation are being dropped making music much more freely available. I am now using Last FM