Pandora's future in doubt

Pandora, one of the first free online radio stations, is on the brink of collapse according to its founder.

The streaming service was forced to block access to UK subscribers in January of this year after it failed to reach an agreement with US music publishers.

Officially, it was meant to be a US-only service but listeners could circumvent this by entering a random configuration in the zip code field. However, this route was eventually shut down.

"We're approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision," said Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora. "This is like a last stand for webcasting."

Where Pandora and similar services are really facing the pinch is in the amount of money they must pay in royalties; last year internet radio stations were ordered to pay twice the amount of the per-song performance royalty, unlike traditional radio stations which pay no fee.

Pandora grew out of the Music Genome Project, started in 2000, which aims to catalogue the DNA of music, similar to that of Human Genome Project.

When it launched it drew rave reviews from users and became an instant internet hit, as it was one of the first services to pioneer personalised radio.

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www.pandora.com