Pandora has added a 40 hour per month limit to free mobile listening. In a post on the company blog, Pandora founder Tim Westergren blamed high royalty rates for the cap, and said it would impact less than 4% of their total monthly active listeners. The average listener spends approximately 20 hours on Pandora across all devices each month, according to the company.
"Pandora's per-track royalty rates have increased more than 25% over
the last 3 years, including 9% in 2013 alone and are scheduled to
increase an additional 16% over the next two years," said Westergren.
For listeners who do hit the limit, Pandora offers a variety of options including unlimited free ad supported listening on desktop and laptop computers, $.99 for unlimited listening for the remainder of that month, and subscriptions dubbed Pandora One for unlimited listening with no ads.
