Pandora No Longer Free, Imposes 40 Hour Monthly Cap

The Intertubes are abuzz with the news that Pandora, everybody's favorite free online personalized radio service is no longer completely free. It's long been known that Pandora has been up the financial creek thanks to ludicrous Internet radio royalty fees imposed by greedy record execs. But, they claim to be on "safe ground" now, and have implemented a new plan for increasing revenue.

Pretty much, it works like this. There is now a 40 hour monthly limit imposed on the folks who are listening for free (it does not include Pandora One subscribers). Once you reach that 40 hour limit, you can pay a fee of, get this, $0.99 to continue listening for the rest of the month, or you can upgrade to Pandora One for $36.00 a year for unlimited listening and a slew of other perks.

Pandora expects this to impact only the "top 10% of users,"so most folks won't even notice this. If you are in that top 10%, you most likely received the following email:

Hi, it’s Tim -

I hope this email finds you enjoying a great summer Pandora soundtrack.

I’m writing with some important news. Please forgive the lengthy email; it requires some explaining.

First, I want to let you know that we’ve reached a resolution to the calamitous Internet radio royalty ruling of 2007. After more than two precarious years, we are finally on safe ground with a long-term agreement for survivable royalty rates – thanks to the extraordinary efforts of our listeners who voiced an absolute avalanche of support for us on Capitol Hill. We are deeply thankful.

While we did the best we could to lower the rates, we are going to have to make an adjustment that will affect about 10% of our users who are our heaviest listeners. Specifically, we are going to begin limiting listening to 40 hours per month on the web. Because we have to pay royalty fees per song and per listener, it makes very heavy listeners hard to support on advertising alone. Most listeners will never hit this cap, but it seems that you might.

We hate the idea of capping anyone's usage, so we've been working to devise an alternative for listeners like you. We've come up with two solutions and we hope that one of them will work for you:

Your first option is to continue listening just as you have been and, if and when you reach the 40 hour limit in a given month, to pay just $0.99 for unlimited listening for the rest of that month. This isn't a subscription. You can pay by credit card and your card will be charged for just that one month. You'll be able to keep listening as much as you'd like for the remainder of the month. We hope this is relatively painless and affordable - the same price as a single song download.

Your second option is to upgrade to our premium version called Pandora One. Pandora One costs $36 per year. In addition to unlimited monthly listening and no advertising, Pandora One offers very high quality 192 Kbps streams, an elegant desktop application that eliminates the need for a browser, personalized skins for the Pandora player, and a number of other features: http://www.pandora.com/pandora_one.

If neither of these options works for you, I hope you'll keep listening to the free version - 40 hours each month will go a long way, especially if you're really careful about hitting pause when you’re not listening. We’ll be sure to let you know if you start getting close to the limit, and we’ve created a counter you can access to see how many hours you’ve already used each month.

We’ll be implementing this change starting this month (July), I’d welcome your feedback and suggestions. The combination of our usage patterns and the "per song per listener" royalty cost creates a financial reality that we can't ignore...but we very much want you to continue listening for years to come.

Please don't hesitate to email me back with your thoughts.

If you ask me, paying a whole dollar to continue listening to a great online radio service is fine by me, especially if it allows them to stay in business. I love Pandora - I listen to it all the time, so I expect to be shelling out $12 a year to continue listening all the time. I think that Pandora is one of those services that the people who use it love. I doubt we'll see any kind of backlash against them for this move. Not only is this a ridiculously fair price, but I think the community will have few problems paying to keep the service alive.

I Finally Bought a PlayStation 3

So, I finally broke down and bought myself a PS3. I snagged a nice deal with a 160GB model, extra controller and 2 games (Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Infamous) for under $500. Woot.

But why? I've been an Xbox 360 loyalist since day 1, and I still believe it is the better system with better games. BUT, it does not play high definition movies. I've long been able to just not care that much, as I've been content with standard definition. However, after last weekend watching Transformers on my outdated HD DVD player and the slew of good HD-worthy movies that came out this summer, the time has come for me to invest in a BluRay player. And since I'm also a gamer, the PS3 seems like a logical option for that. It should be here the end of this week or beginning of next week. I can't wait.

In the world of gaming, there are very few games that I want to play on the PS3 that I can't already play on my 360. Simply stated, I still think the 360 is a better system, because it has more of the games that I want to play. That being said, there some games that I've been tempted to buy a PS3 just so I could play. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was certainly one of them. In fact, ever since I saw the first preview for it in Game Informer, I've wanted to play that game. Story and event driven gameplay, graphics and physics that showed us what the vaunted PS3 hardware could do, and STORY driven gameplay. Few things are cooler than that. Now, I get to play it, and the forthcoming sequel to boot.

Who saw the E3 trailer for the new Uncharted game? It looked jaw-droppingly good, and by itself it might've been enough to push me to buy a PS3 when it came out. Talk about intense gameplay! It looks remarkable, and here it is.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves at IGN.com

Anyway, the only other PS3 exclusive that's come out so far that has me interested is Infamous, which is supposed to be similar to Prototype (you are a badass with special powers running around an apocalyptic city killing things) but better. Sign me up. Expect reviews of both that and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune soon after I receive them.

Transformers Climbs to $339M

Steve Jablonsky's score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has been dominating my music listening time. In the almost 3 weeks that I've owed it, it has become the second most listened to movie score on my computer, according to my iTunes play counts. It comes in behind only the score from the first Transformers film. Go, go Steve Jablonsky.

The movie slipped to 3rd place after a two week run as the top movie in the country. The new Ice Age maintained its hold on second place, and Bruno dangled his wang all the way to number 1. Imagine that, full-on frontal nudity, apparently a lot of it too, as the number one movie in America... Penis much?

Anyway, money time. Transformers brought in another $24.2M this weekend, bringing its 3 week total to $339.2M. Harry Potter comes out this weekend, which means the numbers will probably take a dip. I plan on tracking this movie until it becomes the lowest critically scored movie to break the $400M mark. Just because that will be awesome. Back to the real world, the movie brought its international take to a stupefying $333.1M, which brings it's global total through 3 weeks to $672.3M. These numbers push Transformers ahead of Angels & Demons as the top grossing movie globally, and it maintains its number 1 spot domestically also. Take that Bruno and your craptacular mockumentaries.

Revenge of the Fallen can also claim:

• Best Wednesday opening ever
• 2nd best opening day ever
• 8th biggest worldwide opening ever
• 5th biggest opening week ever
• 2nd biggest single day gross ever
• Biggest opening weekend in June
• 7th biggest opening weekend in the summer
• Biggest 5-day gross for a movie opening on a Wednesday
• 16th highest grossing movie (domestically) ever

I've recently discovered that I'm utterly fascinated by box office statistics. For those interested, all my statistics come from BoxOfficeMojo.com. I'll likely be back next Monday with another recap as we approach that awesome $400M mark.

World Soundtrack Academy Fan's Choice Award

Every year, the Ghent International Film Festival concludes with the World Soundtrack Academy's awards ceremony, which honors the best film scores from the previous year. One award given every year is the Fan's Choice award, where we, the fans, get to vote for our favorite score and the most voted composer wins the award. Simple, right?

Anyway, I just finished my voting - can you guess what my vote for the best score of the last 12 months was?

This was a very easy choice for me: Steve Jablonsky's score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It's easily the best score released in the last 12 months; nothing else really comes close. Heck, it's one of the best scores in recent memory. For anybody that has an appreciation for good music, you should definitely check this album out.

Now it's your turn. Use the link below to submit your vote for the best score of the past year. I'm not going to tell you how to vote, but you should definitely keep Transformers in mind :)

http://www.worldsoundtrackacademy.com/awards2.cgi

More Transformers Goodness

So, I saw the movie again this weekend. Couldn't help myself really. I watched the first movie on my Xbox 360 HD DVD attachment, which I bought specifically so I could watch Transformers in HD. Oops. Don't get me wrong, the movie is phenomenal in HD, but the HD DVD went the way of the Dodo shortly thereafter. Anyway, Transformers was the only HD DVD flick I bought, and I decided to check it out again, since I was bored off my behind. Suffice it to say, the movie was just as awesome as I remembered it being, and I had the sudden urge to go see the sequel.

It was almost 11 at night, so I hopped online to see if there were any showings left. Fortunately there was one, 11:05, so I jumped in my car and hauled ass to the theater. The obnoxiously bad light timing in Colorado Springs coupled with the suffocating presence of cops out on holiday patrol stifled the "haul ass" quite a bit, but I still managed to make it to the show after only missing most of the previews. I did see an interesting trailer for G.I. Joe. I really hope that movie is better than I'm currently thinking it's going to be. We'll see.

Anyway, cue Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Like all the movies I've seen so far this summer, it was far better the second time around. Perhaps it was that I had just finished watching the first movie, so I was already involved with the characters, but I had a hell of a time at the show. I came out of the show positively giddy at the awesomess.

Taken as a whole experience, Transformers and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the two make up probably one of my favorite movie experiences ever. Both movies are just so good.

So... financials time. Transformers took in another $42.5 million this weekend, tied with the new Ice Age movie for weekend gross. The extra cash bumped Transformers into the highest grossing movie of 2009 slot, surpassing Up after just its second weekend of release. After a mere 12 days, the movie has brought in $293.1m domestically and a ginormous $591.4m globally. Revenge of the Fallen is now the 31st highest grossing (domestically) movie of all time, and you can probably look for it to climb significantly higher on that list before its box office run is through. I think it's possible we'll see Transformers break the $400m barrier, which would make it, amusingly, the lowest critically scored movie to break that barrier... ever.

Given my love for the movie, I would love to see this happen, as it's just a slam in the face of the critics who bashed the crap out of the movie.

Go, Transformers!

Eagle Eye - The Review

Well, I finally got around to watching Eagle Eye as part of my July 4th LaBeouf binge. I spent the holiday by myself, so I turned to movies to keep me company, watching Transformers, then booking it to a late showing of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, then wrapping up the evening with a shot of Eagle Eye at about 4:00am.

Anyway, the movie was far better than I thought it would be.

As I mentioned in my Revenge of the Fallen review, I am a stupid-huge fan of Shia LaBeouf, and this was one movie that I meant to see, but I just never got around to it. The movie is a cautionary tale, one that shows us the dark side of Big Brother and an all-knowing entity with the power to act on what it knows. As we find out early in the movie, the "eagle eye" is actually a computer, one that has access to every data source in the world - your social networking activities, shopping habits, credit card records, every camera hooked to a network, and, well, everything imaginable that is hooked to any sort of network. Think of this as being a bit like Enemy of the State, but instead of just sending in the troops, this computer has the ability to control anything attached to a network. This becomes readily apparent as the computer changes shipping locations on certain packages, controls the flow of baggage in an airport, fiddles with power lines, hijacks cranes and computers and cell phones, etc, etc.

As a cautionary tale, it is a little creepy, though it is outdated. I mean, Enemy of the State did it how many years ago? But as a movie, this succeeds in spades.

Of course, LaBeouf gives the movie his particular brand of awesome. His primary character, Jerry Shaw (he's also the twin brother Ethan Shaw) isn't the kind of character he usually plays - we see some of the trademark quick wit that's readily available in his movies, but for the most part, Jerry's kind of a dick through a good portion of the movie. We eventually warm up to him as he grows as a person. It was a new direction for one of his characters, but it was interesting. As always, the role was acted exceptionally well. One of the things that makes LaBeouf such an interesting actor is the seeming ease that he covers such a wide range of emotions. In this movie, for example, we see a dick, a brother, an angry son, and a guy with a big heart - we see anger, tears, joy, terror, and exhaustion - we also see immaturity growing into maturity, a disregard for others, as well as a deep and moving compassion. Very few actors cover such a wide scope of emotion as well as he does.

Jerry is thrown in with Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) as they try to find out what is going on. All the while, they are being pursued by Agent Thomas Morgan of the FBI (Billy Bob Thornton) and Zoe Perez (Rosario Dawson) as they try to fit together the pieces of a large and convoluted puzzle. There are many interesting twists in the movie as the characters' stories and backgrounds come together to show us the master plan behind it all. Watching the characters desperately try to fit all these pieces together themselves is a joy, and once you reach the end, the movie does a nice job of tying up all the loose ends.

Like I said, one of the things that makes this movie great is the way all the little pieces come together to ultimately show you the Eagle Eye's master plan. This was revelaed at a good pace; I wanted to keep watching just to see how it would all go down. The other thing the movie succeeds admirably at is making the computer scary. It can see you everywhere, can hear anything you're saying, can find you anywhere, and it can act accordingly. This isn't just a computer that's going to send in the troops, as I mentioned earlier. It's creepy in a way that Hal (from 2001: A Space Odyssey) is creepy.

There are some things that made me scratch my head here, and it's one of the reasons I don't appreciate the movie as a cautionary tale as much as I feel I could have. For example, in one part of the movie, the computer is controlling cranes in a dockside construction site. These cranes are apparently hooked up to a network so they can be remotely controlled. I ahve never heard of remote controlled cranes at any construction site, so this seemed a bit far-fetched to me. Of course, I may be wrong; such cranes could exist, but it was a little distracting. Also, at one point, the computer reads the vibrations from a cup of coffee to determine what people are talking about. I know techology exists for listening to vibrations through windows and such, but reading those vibrations?

Anyway, these things aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, even as I watched it in the wee hours of the morning. It's a great thrill ride, backed up by a solid story. Oh, and as an additional plus, it was produced by the brilliant minds who wrote Star Trek, Transformers, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Most anything these two are involved with turns out to be great - they're another reason to give this a try.

I definitely recommend checking it out. It's cheap at Wal-Mart and I imagine Netflix has plenty in stock.

Score: 8.0/10.0

Independence Day

Happy Fourth Everybody!