Assimilation
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I've been asked on occasion where I get my music, and I once responded, tongue in cheek, that to tell would mean I'd have to kill the person asking.
Perhaps it would have been better to tell, especially with the trend I see emerging. This is probably old news, but like the frog in boiling water, we can't be apathetic about what's going on. The heat is being turned up and we continue to swim as if nothing's happening.
Two days ago LAST-FM informed me that my trial (of 2 years!) was over. I now have to pay $3.00 a month to keep having their service find similar music to my taste.
This morning I checked out Pandora as a LAST-FM alternative, and was greeted by the following:
"Dear Pandora Visitor,
We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.
We believe that you are in Canada (your IP address appears to be xx.xx.xx.xxx). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com
If you are a paid subscriber, please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com and we will issue a pro-rated refund to the credit card you used to sign up. If you have been using Pandora, we will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be waiting for you.
We will be notifying listeners as licensing agreements are established in individual countries. If you would like to be notified by email when Pandora is available in your country, please enter your email address below. The pace of global licensing is hard to predict, but we have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service everywhere.
We share your disappointment and greatly appreciate your understanding."
In the background today I have Live365 playing the Chip Midnight show. It's a great source of my favorite genre, but is interrupted frequently to tell of the new royalty rates that are driving internet radio stations out of business.
And so it is with these live examples that I sadly realize our days of freedom may be coming to an end. Because in the end, the Internet is simply a money making operation that perhaps gained recognition in the hallways and board rooms of suits later than the usual timline of realized opportunity. And as the suit's business mentality gives way to geekdom with business brains, we, the unwashed masses who only wish to listen and discover freely, will be assimilated.
Sad but true.
Comments (11)
surprisingly interlaced harmonies just jumps right into the headphones, I like this.....thanks
Got to get me some PT. Seems that every song you have posted I have liked. Great written post also. I guess your post tells why I remain to my old favorites and don't venture into new artists very often. BMG Music finally is shipping my Iona "Open Sky" CD the last of my two a year freebies (been getting them since 1988).
one of my favorite PT cd's!
thanks for the play ... bummer about Last FM :(
It's one of those situations where you don't know what you have until it's too late. I haven't even been on Pandora in over a year now, but it used to be a frequent place for me to go and try to find something new. That sucks, man.
I think the good news is that new things are always starting up, and the internet is still the place where a "little" guy can do things all by himself, so even if one service eventually bites the bullet and starts to charge, or restrict its users, or whatever, there's always the next thing right around the corner.
And the track? One of my favorite songs from my favorite PT album.
cap- I would register a new free account, as long as the trial is 2 years. Just start over under a new name. If that doesn't work, here are some other similar artist radio services you can try- finetune.com, meemix.com and jango.com
Thanks Rex. I don't think they really had a 2 year trial. I believe they just started charging recently that's all. Still, might be worth a try.
Thanks for the other sites.
Chuck - yeah, I'll find something else that's a surety.
And that album is their best IMO, although as I go through their older stuff it gets pretty hard to really choose.
yes...*sigh*. i smiled at the over the top politeness of the pandora message
cap- I forgot one of the best service for listening and discovery. It's called Nutsie. See that slider bar above the player? You slide that to whatever percentage and you can mix in that degree of similar artists. If you leave it at 0, it's pure artist radio- in this case Porcupine Tree.
You can build playlists just by grabbing the songs you like, and you can play others list's and listen and explore their libraries.
Well worth the free signup, even if you don't have a library to share at the moment.
Have fun at nutsie.com. Click the player to go to the page shown.
Thanks Rex. Of the other three you told me about, so far I like meemix the best. Nutsie looks good. The library is starting to grow agani. I found 4 CD's worth of backups that were done several years ago, so it's a good start. Got the PC back yesterday after having diagnositcs done on the hardware. Turns out that some of the Windows drivers that support SATA got wiped somehow. Anyway, back in ship shape and beginng the rebuild.
Great to hear that they were able to restore what's on the hard drive, cap. Once I don't have to watch our pennys quite so closely, I'm gonna get my library back from my crashed drives too.
Glad you like meemix- it's the most like Pandora and Lastfm.