Pandora to limit free mobile users to 40 hours streaming a Month

Looks like one of the original streaming radio services on Android, Pandora, is about to take away your free streaming. Not entirely, but if you aren’t going to pay for service with them, you will have a 40 hour per month limit imposed on you.

They put up a post explaining that raising royalty costs are part of the reason. Pandora also states that the limit of 40 hours per month will only affect about 4% of its total monthly active users and is only for mobile devices. The average listener is only pulling in 20 hours of streaming per month. With per-track royalty rates jumping more than 25% over the last three years, it isn’t hard to see why Pandora needs to make a change, even if it is against their original mission.

There is an inexpensive way out of the limit if you are part of the estimated 4% though. Your free service will still be available for unlimited listening on a laptop or PC, you can pay $0.99 for unlimited listening for the rest of the month or subscribe to the service. The plans are $3.99 a month or $36 a year.

I know I use Pandora for a good 8 to 10 hours a day through Play-Fi to their speaker and my daughter pulls down a good 3 hours a day through the Google TV. They don’t mention how this change will affect those mediums. They also haven’t put the new information up on their Play Store listing for the app. We will be reaching out to our friends to find out though. Will this hinder you in anyway? Have you moved on to Google Music, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn or Slacker anyways?