It has been along time since, good quality music showed up on any of the online radios. All we get to hear over there are the same old tracks, that by now have become quite frankly too boring. The reason for this vacuum of new music is that the record companies used to charge hefty fees from the online radios, that almost made them bankrupt.

But now, in a landmark agreement between the online radio owners and the label companies have finally given a sliver of hope for our beloved internet radios to play our favorite music again. The settlement came into effect as the record labels came to realize the importance of internet radios, as a medium of introducing users to new artists and different genres of music.

According to Tim Westergren (Founder, Pandora Radio), “This is definitely the agreement that we’ve been waiting for.” Pandora is one of the most influential radios available online, with an astounding 30 million registered users. However, due to the current stipulations with the record labels, Pandora isn’t offering its services in India and to any other region outside the United States. When visiting the website, you get this error message,

“We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.  We believe that you are in India (your IP address appears to be XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com”

According to the new agreements, major radio players such as Pandora, will be liable to pay 25% of the revenue of a pre-determined amount of fee, every time a user listens to a song online. The fee would start at 0.08 cents for the songs that were released in the year 2006 and would continue to rise upto 0.14 cents till the year 2015.

Via New York Times.