Pandora - only available to the US. Or not.
Posted on Sunday, May 27th, 2007 at 7:49pm. #
BBC News reported:
From Thursday 3 May, Pandora will check a listener’s country of origin by looking at their computer’s IP address - the unique number which will identify the country in which the PC has connected to the net. Mounting pressure from record labels has forced the company to stop streaming music to countries where licensing deals have not been agreed.
Techcrunch reported:
If you live outside of the U.S. and enjoy listening to customized radio stations on Pandora, brace yourself for some bad news. The site will be shutting you out starting Thursday evening. Registered users who access the service from outside the U.S. received a warning email yesterday letting them know that this will be happening.
It seemed that Pandora was dead for those of us outside the land of the “free”. Pandora says at the bottom of every page that it’s “currently for US listening only”, and links to the FAQ saying so. The UK appears not to be a special case.
Which is why I find it a little odd that I can listen at work (an IP address that comes out of Glasgow or London, depending on when I log on), and at home (an IP address which comes out of London). I’m not using any silly proxies; just connecting as normal. I’ve been listening recently to it for six or seven hours a day - without any problem.
In April last year, most commercial radio stations were forced by PPL to stop broadcasting outside of the UK. Phil Riley from Chrysalis Radio spoke for many of us when he said, at the Radio 3.0 event a few weeks ago, that if his stations were “playing by the rules”*, he found it slightly irritating that non-UK stations were also available, unfettered, into the UK.
Do you have access to Pandora? I’d be really interested to know. Of course, you need a US zip code to sign up, which is where you need to remember that high-school soap from the 1980s called, cough, Beverley Hills 902… well, I’ll not give it all away.
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* As an aside, PPL’s website defines PPL as “a music industry organisation collecting and distributing airplay and public performance royalties in the UK”. In the UK. Not anywhere else. So, while they have full rights to levy fees on non-UK internet broadcasters who are audible in the UK, they have no rights, whatsoever, to control any music user’s use of music outside of the UK. So, if you want to broadcast worldwide, you have no need to fear PPL… just every single equivalent of PPL in every single territory worldwide.
Dave Fitzpatrick said at May 27th, 2007 at 8:25pm 
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