Taking a page from Slacker’s book, Internet music service Pandora is augmenting their paid service offerings with ad-supported streaming – think audio commercials. Thus far, home audio hardware (Sonos, Squeezebox) had required a subscription ($36/yr) for service. Now, a free ad-supported Pandora service offering is being made available as an option for the Squeezebox platform. Given the massive number of downloads, and presumably usage, of Pandora’s new iPhone application it’s a safe bet that we’ll see similar service models for mobile devices introduced at some point. Quite a few of us are partaking and Pandora’s got royalties to pay – so I’m fine with them selling (a reasonable amount of) ads or charging me a modest fee for ad-free music.
Ad-supported audio? That’s a great idea! And we can call it “Radio”!
That’s about right, Derek! Ad-supported free audio doesn’t bother me in the least. They have to pay their bills, and if the user’s not going to be clicking ads on a web page while listening, reasonable in-stream advertising works for me.
The trick will be finding a reasonable balance. I don’t mind a two-minute or three-minute block of ads a couple of times an hour on the radio, or the same block of time a few times an hour in a TV show, but I admit long ads before my online content starts bother me.
Ads on my Slacker portable have continued to be extremely minimal. Wondering if they can afford to keep ad time so low.
That said, I was also happy to pay $36/yr for Pandora on my Squeezebox. I’d keep paying… except I like the Slacker stations better…
Pandora with audio ads is a bad idea. Their stations are not good enough to support that. Mari has it right, Slacker’s stations are way better and I barely notice any ads.
I used to love Pandora but I will stop listening if they keep playing audio ads.
Um or you can just Block the ip of the Ad’s Like Technorati, Double Click, Inc. I just ban all the ips besides pandora and im ad free, easy loop hole, Thanks to “PeerGuardian” or other IP blockers that dont put up with commercial or advertising.
O rly, I can block audio ads embedded into streaming music?