It wasn’t that long ago that Pandora was on the verge of going under thanks to royalty issues, but the company survived and went on to become the premier Internet radio service, giving users free music based on the artists …

mSpot has just launched a new service that’s kind of like mSpot meets Pandora (without the ads). It’s called Radio Spotter (beta) and combines cloud music storage/streaming with streaming Internet radio. It will match the songs you play from your …

Pandora Internet Radio has, at some point, helped most curious music lovers discover something completely new. For me, years ago, my Blitzen Trapper channel led me to Agalloch. I guess it’s the Portland thing. Those of you familiar with the …

Pandora announced today that it is giving users the ability to launch genre-based Internet radio stations.  While Pandora is known for the creation of personalized stations, based on artists or songs, this gives users the opportunity to listen to broader stations, while remaining in their musical comfort zone.

Pandora has updated its site to make it easier for users to find and adjust their privacy settings. Given that Pandora was a launch partner for Facebook’s Open Graph initiative, which set off a huge wave of privacy concerns, this is probably a good idea, if not a bit late.

Popular music site Jango has just announced what it claims is the world’s largest, most targeted and cost-effective ad network for the music vertical. This is a pretty bold claim, but certainly one worth looking at.

Yahoo’s plate is more than full at the moment; between battling Google, losing its CEO, and facing takeover rumors, figurative food is piled to the ceiling.  It makes some sense, then, that responsibility for Yahoo Music’s Launchcast Radio is getting largely handed to CBS.

Layoffs at Internet companies continue to be announced, with the latest coming from Internet radio site Pandora. Pandora’s fate itself was in question not too long ago, but has recently found new hope and expects to survive after all.

Pandora’s obituary was all but written last month as SoundExchange called for higher royalty payments from the Internet Radio site, and others like it. But there is a little life in the site and in the industry yet.

It’s been a rough time of late for Internet Radio, and music sites in general. Pandora’s expecting to shut down. Karaoke videos have been pulled. Muxtape was shut down.

Internet radio sites aren’t the only ones facing recording industry woes. Even Karaoke performances are coming under fire. Users of "The Sims On Stage" (a site owned by Electronic Arts) were recently greeted with the following message:

There has been a lot of Facebook hype in recent memory. This is fueled by the fact that the site’s growth has more than doubled, in no small part thanks to localization around the world.

The other day I posted an article about Pandora’s probably upcoming demise as a result of a royalty rate hike put in place by SoundExchange, which represents record labels and the artists signed to them. If popular opinion around the ‘net is any indication, the issue is a lot larger than Pandora shutting down.

An Industry in Peril

Pandora.com, an Internet radio site that I am personally quite fond of is hitting a rocky patch (if you’re not familiar with Pandora, WebProNews recently chatted its CEO Tim Westergren, so check that out).

In March, the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board approved a proposal by SoundExchange, working on behalf of the RIAA, which would implement a significant increase in royalty rates for streaming audio providers. Realizing that these rates would put them under, online radio stations banded together in one last desperate appeal to the CRB to reconsider the decision.

Unfortunately for Internet radio providers, and for music lovers around the world, the judges at the CRB denied the appeal headed up by NPR and joined by several online radio stations.

In a decision that could drive the nail in the coffin to Internet radio providers, the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board has endorsed a proposal by SoundExchange to enact royalty rates for webcasts and streaming music sites that will stay in effect from 2006 until 2010.