Pandora has been the choice for many people who want to listen to radio stations across a number of genres such as artists, decades, and even seasonal. Pandora offers a premium subscription service called Pandora One that allows users to listen without any ads, at a higher audio quality and other perks. The problem is a good majority of Pandora’s users listen to the service’s free service, and as a result, the company is announcing some changes the majority of Pandora users probably won’t be happy to hear.
Pandora is announcing they will begin limiting the amount of time a free Pandora user can listen to their tunes to 40 hours a month on mobile devices. The reason for this change in service is due to the rise of royalty costs, although Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren says only about 4 percent of its over 65 million regular customers will be affected by these limits as the average user listens to about 20 hours of turns a month.
The limits to free Pandora users will go into affect this week. A spokesperson for Pandora says the limits will most likely be temporary, but hasn’t said when exactly the company plans to lift their new limits.