I had quite the love affair with Pandora Internet Radio. I have to admit their Music Genome Project was pretty cool. They claimed each song in the project was analyzed “using up to 400 distinct musical characteristics.”

That meant if I started a new “station” with a song I liked, I was likely to enjoy the rest of the music they matched me up with. Last time I looked I had 63 stations, most of which I had extensively customized by rating the songs I did and didn’t like.

I admit I was a hardcore consumer of Pandora. I used it almost 40 hours a week while at work.

Yes, there was advertising, but since I kept Pandora in it’s own tab, it wasn’t too intrusive. And, to be quite honest about it, I didn’t mind the ads so much since they were built into the Pandora page and didn’t impact the listening experience at all. I understood they were a necessary evil that paid for the service I enjoyed.

A few months back, though, Pandora dropped me an email and said that they were limiting free accounts to 40 hours a month. If I wanted more, I’d have to upgrade to “Pandora One” for $36 a year, which would also take away the ads.

I thought by receiving the ads I was already “paying” for the service!

So now I listen to Pandora until it runs out, then simply dump it for the rest of the month, which means the ads targeted at unpaid users like me are stopped. I now listen to free radio through Windows Media Player where there are minimal advertisements and no time limits.