I’m not much of a music fan. I enjoy listening to it while driving or whenever I’m doing boring and repetitive tasks. I enjoy silence.

But I’m not that happy when the silence is imposed on me. I’m talking about Pandora.com which is a music service that launched a couple of years ago. The launch caused some raised eyebrows in the music industry at the time. So it came as no surprise when Pandora closed down it’s service to the whole world except the US and the UK in May 2007.

Internet music broadcasting in the US is regulated by the DCMA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) which streamlines the process of acquiring all the licenses needed to keep such a service running. But outside of the US deals have to be negotiated with record labels in each country, which is a legal nightmare that Pandora (much like Hulu.com) choose to live without.

According to Podcasting News website:

Founder Tim Westergren said this week that the company cannot reach an agreement with music industry trade bodies over music licensing fees, adding that the licensing bodies’ rates “are far too high to allow ad-supported radio to operate” in the UK.

This would be sad news for music fans, but the community as risen to the occasion and launched a new website called globalPandora.
The site wraps around Pandora.com allowing this way everyone around the world to once more enjoy high quality music for free on the web. There are several other music services similar to Pandora link MeeMix.com. But I really like the minimalist interface, the quality of the audio and the way music genres or artists are cataloged and served.

Now if someone just did the same for Hulu.com I’d be a happy camper.

Via I Blog All