Ordinary Gweilo

Go to Pandora, and you will be greeted with this rather depressing 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 most 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 Hong Kong

Well, yes, I am.

Pandora say that they will try to offer their service in more countries, but it seems safe to assume that Hong Kong will not be the first one they get to.  Or the second, or the third. Negotiating with record companies in each country is going to be a long, painful, process, and Hong Kong is just too small a market for them to even try.

A few ago I wrote about DVD region codes and this prompted a debate between Spike and myself about whether I should be allowed to buy imported DVDs when there is a local distributor who owns the rights for Hong Kong.  My view is that if I buy a genuine/legal DVD then the producers of the film will get their cut, which they wouldn’t do if I download it or buy a pirate disc – and frankly I don’t care too much whether the local distributor gets his cut or not. 

Clearly the same principles apply to recorded music, and so when the RIAA argued that Pandora should not be offering their service outside the USA there was no legal defence – and Pandora have been forced to stop them offering this service (BBC news).  I am tempted to point out the irony here, in that the members of the RIAA were getting money from Pandora in respect of listeners outside the United States, but the reality is that the record industry don’t approve of Pandora (and similar services) and so they will do anything they can to make it difficult for them to operate.  Apparently they believe that if they stop people listening to music for free, they will pay for it instead.  Yeah, right… 

I have cancelled my subscription for emusic because if I can’t listen to music then I am not going to buy.  Yes, I know that I could probably use a proxy service to get access to Pandora, or use another service such as last.fm, but I think I’ve got the message that the record industry doesn’t want my money.