I'm a big fan of The Musical Genome project. The concept of getting streamed music in a custom defined radio station is excellent. I use it when I'm writing to get me in the mood or when I'm web surfing to help me relax. I have stations which play rock, blues, instrumental and 'girly pop' (That's music from female singers to you folks with the wrong sort of mind!)
But now it appears that their days are numbered. I received a note from Tim Westgren who is the founder of Pandora saying that the Performing Rights Society are asking too much money for their performances. It's an outrage - and Tim thinks so too. They've already been forced to restrict the service to the UK and US, the UK is about to be colsed and it looks like the US won't be far behind.
As Tim himself says:
It continues to astound me and the rest of the team here that the industry is not working more constructively to support the growth of services that introduce listeners to new music and that are totally supportive of paying fair royalties to the creators of music
View the full note here.
I really don't know what to do about this. It's an excellent (free) service) that appears to be being dominated by 'The Man' and it shouldn't be allowed. It's not as though Pandora are ripping the musicians off - they pay them royalties for every song played. The PRS is just asking too much money per song to make it financially viable.
Anybody got any ideas about what to do about this? If nothing happens this useful resource will be gone forever.
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