Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Pandora forced to block UK access.

(For those who don't know, Pandora is an internet radio site that uses feedback you provide to tune the music played to your tastes, I believe that access is built in to Squeezeboxes. It's a great way of discovering music that you didn't know you liked. The UK is an island off the North coast of mainland Europe :-) )

In another amazing move from the record industry, Pandora has been forced to stop access to UK IP addresses. We lose it in a few days time.

I've spent a fortune on real CDs (which are at least physically mine once I've paid for them) from great bands that I'd never heard of before, purely because Pandora introduced me to them. The bonus was that they were dirt cheap on Amazon becasue of the terrible job that the record industry did in marketing it properly in the first place! I responded to their email, and got a nice email back which mentions a petition which could hopefully clear the way to the UK being economically viable for them later. Can I ask any UK citizens to consider signing up?

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/SaveNetRadioUK

For those of you in the US, I'd appreciate what you've got while you've got it! When they send out emails asking for help - they really do need it.

Cheers,

Mark.

I had an email from Pandora a few days ago informing they will stop UK access from 15th Jan. This really lacks forethought as they are limiting new music to new (potential) customers.


Thanks for the link to the petition.

Not only in UK count in the rest of the world or Europe.

Non US citizens can not have, Pandora Rapsody ? and couple of other services that is normaly aviable trough squeeze network.

Another angle of the same thing, Many sources off downloads is unaviable outside us eg MP3's from amazon MusicGiant etc ? and the alternative,if I try to buy files legaly and the content provider says "no we don't like your monay go away" :-)

Is their a petention somewhere for the whole of EU ?

last.fm is UK based and rather good.

Pandora was good because it integrated well with a Squeezebox.

OT, rumours that Microsoft are going to buy Logitech !!

Can this not still be connected to via a us proxy?

Can you stream reliably trough proxy TOR etc any suggestion's welcome.
You have to sign upp trough proxy too as these pages detect IP, and have a credit card in an US bank.

Is it worth it, considering the alternative's ?

Just what I was wondering- couldnt you connect using some kind of "hide your IP" software/ setup?

Sorry you are losing something you enjoy. My side rant is the content holders (audio, video, print) all need to figure out how to operate in the brave new world because when they dont, the technology companies and the consumers do it for them.

best regards,
Jerry

Exactly ! why do they make it so hard to even try legal streaming or downloads. they are clearly not getting it.

There is a complete mess with web based radio in Europe no clear easy direction on how to collect fees etc.

Perfect example. I just watched an episode of the Sopranos. The end music was a remix of Ennio Morricone's "Man with a Harmonica". So I go to IMDB to check the soundtrack listing for the episode, look up Apollo 440 in Wikipedia, find the audio track on last.fm together with other fine sounds by the same band and end up on Amazon dodging the "customers who bought this also bought that" options.

This is how marketing is meant to work - and the music moguls are using the law to prevent it. Then they wonder why their industry is going to sh*t when the latest Britney bombs.........