Pandora re-opens its box of music to Australians

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.