The idea of a readion station moulded to one's tastes is clever but full scale internet radio with a choice of genre works best for me as I like everything from classical to trance electronice and heavy via bluegrass, folk and ambient.

there's no way I'd want to listen to a mish-mash of all of that intermittently from one stream.

it all depends on my mood/the time of day or what i'm doing whilst playing music.

I love Tuner for my iPhone as I, at last have a huge choice of internet radio in my lounge - something I've wanted for some time and was close to paying a lot of money for in the past year.

so now I can have old style jazz from KJAZ when relaxing - or switch to Philosomatika or Seceret Agent for driving techno when gaming

the dock which came with the iPhone has an audio out port which I connect to my hi-fi and a travel charger plugged from dock into socket means the phone is charging at same time - perfect!

Great attitude.

Perhaps simply getting your butt out of your *** and you would have seen this message…

"Dear Pandora Visitor,

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 Canada (your IP address appears to be 24.137.195.83). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com

If you are a paid subscriber, please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com and we will issue a pro-rated refund to the credit card you used to sign up. If you have been using Pandora, we will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be waiting for you.

We will be notifying listeners as licensing agreements are established in individual countries. If you would like to be notified by email when Pandora is available in your country, please enter your email address below. The pace of global licensing is hard to predict, but we have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service everywhere.

We share your disappointment and greatly appreciate your understanding…"

http://www.pandora.com/restricted

Isn't technology wonderful???

You can ALMOST replace a $12. Chinese AM/FM radio/CD player with a Chinese iPhone, for $199. down plus $59.99 a month!

So what will happen to all the 'free' stuff on the internet, including TV and radio when the internet finally gets TAXED* (probably metered and taxed according to bandwidth), and you suddenly have to pay subscriber fees to get what has been 'free' for so long?

*If you think that nearly every local, state, and Federal government agency isn't looking for whole new untapped revenue stream, you haven't read the newsfeeds lately!

Yeah, that's cool, but why can I listen to Radio Paradise from anywhere in the world, last FM and iTunes (the American store) but only Pandora tells me that there is a distribution rights problem if I am outside the country? I know this is a problem that doesn't affect most of you, but is the deal with globalization, if an American can't listen to American radio wherever he happens to be? Anyway, too bad for Pandora, if that is the way they want to do it. They good get hip and say to the record companies, "this guy has an American zip code, he should be able to listen to his own radio stations." But, I am sure there is another forum for this.

Pandora's not quite the same, since it's personalized. It's Not Quite Radio. It's more like a personalized music service. And if it's U.S. only, I'd assume it's not because Pandora wants it to be that way, but because they've been forced to make it that way.

---

Jason Snell, Editorial Director, Macworld

AOL Radio rocks because I live in Santa Clarita, just north of Los Angeles, and pretty much all the radio stations are wiped out by the mountains. Now I can listen to KROQ and KROQ2 - ROQ of the 80's (it streams HD Radio multi-cast stations!). The iPhone app works just fine over Edge or WiFi (better quality on WiFi obviously). Just don't max out the volume and it sounds great. Now I can listen to Kevin and Bean in the morning on KROQ and listen to Classic KROQ on KROQ2 during the day. I connect my iPhone to powered speakers on my desk at work.

I also use the standard AOL Radio app on the Mac and use AirFoil to stream it to my AirPort Express connected to my living room stereo. The FM broadcasts with AOL Radio turn the iPhone into an FM tuner for free! That is worth the free admission right there.

Think about it from Pandora's perspective; why wouldn't they want you to listen from anywhere? The only reason would be money.

Their terms of service say, "Thanks to the way our music licensing works, you have to live in the
United States to use Pandora. You also have to be at least 13 years
old. Pandora can only be used if you are in the United States." I don't know how they verify this, but it's pretty clear that you have to be physically in the United States to listen to their service. Perhaps they can't afford the license for international listening?

Whatever the international listening issue is, they say they're already skating on thin financial ice as it is. So we may not have a choice in a year or two.

Read the recent Washington Post article here.