More bad news on the international licensing front for Pandora.
Starting Weds May 16th, we have to block access to visitors from IP’s in Canada. We’ve been working hard with the rights-holders there to bring a legitimate Pandora service on-line for Canadians, but those conversations have come to an abrupt end. Just a week after we started blocking most of the rest of the world comes news that there simply aren’t licenses in the cards for us in Canada in the near future which leaves us with no choice but to shut down Canadian access.
This is incredibly painful. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we never wanted it to go this way. We have lots of great listeners in Canada and I’m incredibly sorry to see them go. We’ll continue to fight for licenses… the state of music copyright really is at a crossroads. What a terrible day.
June 19, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Why is it the case that you can’t negotiate on a smaller scale than an entire country level. Wouldn’t a Pandora where you can only play 10% of available music be better than no Pandora at all? What about making a way for indie artists to get included in Pandora easily?