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Buying Guide: Pandora (Winter 2009)
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For many users Pandora is Internet radio. The service, which was spawned from the Music Genome Project, is one of the pioneers of the genre. In addition to being a great source of free music, Pandora was long free of audio ads, but its business model finally fell afoul of the recording industry, resulting in a protracted legal battle over licensing fees. As a result, Pandora has finally introduced audio ads into the stream. They're less intrusive than the ones on Slacker, its main competitor. Slacker plays about one song's worth of ads per hour (that's the official word from a Slacker spokesperson, though he said it's often less than that); Pandora plays just one ad for 15 seconds every two hours. It's a small price to pay for what remains a killer Internet radio service, even if it still lags behind Slacker in a few key areas.
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