Pandora limits time of free listening

Streaming music service Pandora will limit the time for listeners to 40 hours of free listening per month, the company announced in a blog post. This decision was taken as a result of the increasing of license fees, which the company must pay to record companies.

Users who want to listen to music for more than 40 hours a month can purchase Pandora One subscription, and get unlimited access to listening. They can also purchase one-time access cost 0.99 dollars to listen to music for the rest of the month. Users of desktop computers can continue to listen to music without restrictions.

"Most of you reading this will never hit the limit. In fact, it will affect less than 4% of our total monthly active listeners. For perspective, the average listener spends approximately 20 hours listening to Pandora across all devices in any given month.

That said, limiting listening is a very unusual thing to do, and very contrary to our mission so we wanted to share a quick explanation. Pandora's per-track royalty rates have increased more than 25% over the last 3 years, including 9% in 2013 alone and are scheduled to increase an additional 16% over the next two years. After a close look at our overall listening, a 40-hour-per-month mobile listening limit allows us to manage these escalating costs with minimal listener disruption."

Pandora may soon come under increasing pressure from competitors. Google and Apple are rumored to be developing a subscription-based music services, as well as Spotify, reportedly working on the introduction of free product for mobile devices.