Ad-free Pandora
Yesterday I subscribed to Pandora’s new ad-free service, “Pandora One.” The tipping point came when ‘Graceland’ was followed by an audio ad for Terminator: The College Years.
The service is, in my opinion, perfectly priced, at $36/year. I suspect that this figure was chosen (as opposed to, say, $40/year) because it prompts you to do the mental math and figure out - for yourself - that it’s only 10 cents/day. Brings you back to the days of pledge week on NPR, doesn’t it? And speaking of which, how great is technology that it can exempt subscribers from requests for money or ads? I remember that being my main mental counter- argument to Bob Edwards - if I send you money, I still have to listen to you solicit us for two weeks every few months!
Anyway, the service is great. No ads of any kind, really great audio quality, plus a sleek desktop app with built in growl-type notifications of what song is playing. I’m also hoping that, since it’s a stand-alone app, this means that I’ll be able to map the keyboard controls for iTunes to control Pandora instead. If anyone has already figured out how to do this, please let me know!