RIP Pandora

There are many wonderful things that the Internet brings us, but surely one of the most wonderful over the past year or so must have been Pandora. The idea was a brilliant one: select a band you like and, using an analysis based on a number of musical attributes, Pandora will play a stream of records from your band and similar types of music. Like Amazon's filters, you can select which tracks you like and don't like and Pandora will refine your stream until you get music that's pretty much bang on.

I found it a great way to listen to new music and found, and bought, quite a lot of music I wouldn't otherwise have been exposed to.

As of today, Pandora has been forced to suspend its service to anyone outside the USA, doing so by using your URL to determine you're not from the land of the free and the home of the brave. According to founder Tim Westergren, "We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that we must begin proactively preventing access to Pandora's streaming service for most countries outside of the U.S. It is difficult to convey just how disappointing this is for us."

Not to mention the rest of us. But the real losers in the long term are going to be the short-sighted yo-yo toting cretins behind the whole idiocy: the record companies. And I, for one, won't be sparing them many tears...