I listen to Pandora a LOT. Several hours a day, every day. In July they added a limit to their ad supported service limiting "free" listening to 40 hours a month. I got an email saying "although this change affects only 10% of our listeners, you are one of them!"
Once you reach the 40 hour limit, you have two options. You can pay $1 to continue to use the ad supported service for the rest of the month, or you can pay $36 for the year to upgrade to the premium, non-ad supported service. I actually think this is a fairly nice way to deal with generating more revenue while keeping the service affordable. BUT I'm annoyed with two things about this arrangement.
First, Pandora has made the interface for the $1 a month option cumbersome. You have to wait until you actually run out of time for the month and then enter your credit card number. It enters it as a one time payment, which means you need to type in your credit card number every month. This is obviously intended to steer you to the $36/year premium service.
Which brings me to my second gripe. I feel like I am absolutely paying enough for my ad-supported Pandora already. Somehow from my music taste, Pandora's ads can divine my needs and desires more readily than even I can. So far, I have purchased Dove deodorant with matching body spray, renewed my passport, and purchased Venus Spa razor blades, pretty much all based off Pandora advertising. They know about my secret shame, enjoying Bud Light with Lime, and are trying to get me to buy some of that too.
As it turns out, I ran out of Pandora credit yesterday, so I'll be using other free services for another day until it starts over. It's probably worth it for me to just upgrade to the paid service, but it will take me a bit to feel like it's not being imposed on me.
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2 comments:
There's an easy workaround (granted, you need at least a couple of email accounts for it to work, but still). Google "Pandora workaround" and midway down the page to the offroaders.com page. Good luck!
I actually happily paid Pandora the 99 cents yesterday when I reached my August limit. I figure I use their service about 120 hours a month, so I'm happy to help pay for the cost of letting me listen to that much music. I like the fact that even though Pandora has a premium service, they also gave me a very low cost option to keep listening too, rather than leaving my choices 40 hours or premium.
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