Pandora One Subscription Changes

[BOP]

There are 460+ people who have blogged about this at the link below. So far, it's running 459-1 against Pandora. I cancelled my subscription that I've had for 4 or 5 years now. It was sneaky and underhanded, the way they handled this (not notifying anyone), or else it was a deliberate way to eliminate annual subscribers. In any case, I'm done with Pandora and have already begun deleting it off my devices.


http://blog.pandora.com/2014/03/18/6128/#more-6128

In order to continue to provide an ad-free listening option, we are implementing some changes to the way we price Pandora One, including a modest price increase for new Pandora One subscriptions:

Existing Pandora One monthly subscribers that remain active will not experience a price increase at this time and will continue to pay $3.99 per month.
For new subscribers, the subscription price will change to $4.99 per month starting in May.
Existing annual subscribers that remain active will migrate to a discounted loyalty price of $3.99 per month at their next renewal period.
We are ending the annual subscription option.

Beginning this week, annual subscribers approaching their renewal date will be notified as the update is applied to their subscription. Monthly pricing for new subscribers will take effect in May, allowing time for new subscribers to take advantage of discounted loyalty pricing if they subscribe before then.

 

[vraiblonde]

Help me understand: are you bent because they eliminated the annual subscription or because of the price increase?

 

[Tilted]

This seems pretty reasonable to me. The price isn't going up for existing monthly users, so they don't necessarily need to be notified of anything. I suppose Pandora could have let them know: Hey, you get to keep your price but if you cancel and then sign back up you'll have to pay an additional $1 a month. As for existing annual subscribers, their price is effectively going up $1 a month; but Pandora indicated they will be notified before that happens (meaning, when their subscription gets close to running out and they'll have to start paying monthly). So, they'll have notice before there's an effective price increase and they can choose to stop using Pandora if they want to.

The pricing for Pandora, at about $5 per month, still seems pretty decent to me. Compare that to, e.g., Beats' streaming service which is about $100 per year. Pandora has to work toward making money at some point. It can't just build market share and customer loyalty forever, all the while continuing to lose money. Content acquisition eats up more than half Pandora's total revenue, and most of that revenue still comes from advertisement rather than subscription fees. So, if it's going to offer largely ads-free service, it needs to collect a fair price for it. I'm not sure even $5 a month gets it there, but it's an incremental move in the necessary direction.

 

[BOP]

The price is totally reasonable, and I have no quibble with that. It's the WAY they did it. First of all, they didn't email anybody about anything. In years past, they were downright obnoxious about emailing to let people know their subscription was up. Not this year. I only noticed it in the banner at the top of the page. When I went to renew this, my only choices were monthly subscription or cancel. I like Pandora, generally speaking. I've had it for more than 4 years now. If you look at the link, they tap-dance like a monkey on crack around the issue of jacking our rates and forcing us to pay monthly.

 

[MMM_donuts]

Apple radio is only $24.99 annually....

 

[Tilted]

The price is totally reasonable, and I have no quibble with that. It's the WAY they did it. First of all, they didn't email anybody about anything. In years past, they were downright obnoxious about emailing to let people know their subscription was up. Not this year. I only noticed it in the banner at the top of the page. When I went to renew this, my only choices were monthly subscription or cancel. I like Pandora, generally speaking. I've had it for more than 4 years now. If you look at the link, they tap-dance like a monkey on crack around the issue of jacking our rates and forcing us to pay monthly.

Are you saying that your annual subscription ended or came close to ending and you didn't get some kind of notice about the change? If so, then yeah, it should have been handled differently. Their post seemed to indicate that they would be notifying annual subscribers about the change before their subscriptions ran out.

 

[Tilted]

Apple radio is only $24.99 annually....

And that includes iTunes Match. For my purposes, that's a great bargain. It's made even more of a bargain because you can often find iTunes gift cards for 15 or 20% off around the holidays, and that effectively makes everything purchased through the iTunes stores (to include iTunes Match / ad-free iTunes Radio) 15 or 20% cheaper.

 

[BOP]

I already have iTunes, but other than listening to my albums, I've never fooled with it. I'll have to check it out.

 

[BOP]

I discovered a radio station called "Jango." So far, I like it. Very similar to Pandora, except entirely free (for now). Very intuitive, easy to use. Has some visual ads, and they claim only one audio ad per day. Don't know if they have a time-out after so many hours (Pandora went from 5 hours to 3 with Pandora One).