The service that once closed its doors to international activity has for some reason opened them once again, with Australians now able to access the service called the “Music Genome Project”.
A fluke discovery by GadgetGuy staffers this evening revealed that Australians once again have access to Pandora.com, a music service that finds new artists and songs for people to listen to based on an initial song or artist entered into the project.
Originally launched in 2000, the project started blocking non-US connections in 2007, forcing Australians to find a different way to discover new music at a time when online music services weren’t in abundance.
As it stands, Australians have quite a few music services to choose from at the moment, what with the recent launches of Spotify and Telstra’s partnership with MOG joining the likes of Rdio, Rara, Zune Music, and JB HiFi’s Now service.
Pandora’s music streaming service is different from most of these, with the music coming out as less of a full album and more of a radio station for you to find new selections for. The service is mostly free, with a few advertisements thrown in the middle of song sets. In America, customers can purchase a $37 per year subscription that removes the ads.
Currently, the service seems to be accessible only from web browsers (Mac or PC), with the mobile applications missing in action in their respective mobile app stores. However, the service isn’t blocking Australians and listing their IP addresses, as it has been since international online users were blocked from using the Pandora service.
We’re not quite sure why Pandora is currently allowing traffic from Australia, but right now, we’d take advantage of it.
It’s altogether possible that we’ll see a partnership between a major telco or ISP and Pandora, and that’s why the website has opened up its ports to Australians, but we’ll know soon enough.
It’s working in NZ too!
I’ve noticed this as well. I’ve had the mobile app on my phone for over a year now and have been able to access pandora as long as I don’t interact with the service (i.e. click on the thumbs up or down). Last week I started getting ads for the first time using the mobile service. The ads are all American. For instance I got an Obama ad asking why big oil is spending millions $’s attacking him, a Lowe’s (US home improvement store) ad, a margarita drink ad, etc. Glad I don’t have to use a US vpn server to access the normal www website.
Interesting. I had hoped this meant Pandora had opened up to the rest of the world, but apparently not.
I’ve just tried it. It let me sign up for an account and is letting me use the thumbs up button at least. Been waiting for this to become available to Australians for a while now.
Thank you for breaking the news. You went straight to the top of my RSS list when I read this. Brilliant work!
🙂