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 and songs they like.

Pandora had its initial public offering today, opening on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P”. The company priced about 14.76 million shares of common stock at $16 per share, with a total of about 6 million shares are being offered by Pandora, and 8.7 million shares by selling stockholders.

Pandora also granted underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 2.2 million shares to cover over-allotments.Here’s a glimpse of what the stock is doing at the time of this writing, via Google Finance:

Obviously Pandora has had a big day, but they haven’t been too busy not to wish Ice Cube a happy birthday:

And in the end, that’s what really matters.

Pandora has a market cap of 2.87 Billion.