Just a couple of weeks ago we reported that Pandora were shuttering their Australian and New Zealand operations amidst a re-structure of the company to focus on the US market. Today Pandora have sent out an email to users advising them that Pandora will be ending its service to listeners located in Australia and New Zealand.
If you are a free user your service will just cease to operate on the 31st of July. For subscribers it will also stop working and Pandora will cancel your subscription for you. Depending on when you subscribed within the calendar month Pandora will also refund you pro-rata via your Play Store account.
Unfortunately if you purchased your subscription via a gift card from a retailer other than Pandora you are out of luck and will have to try and gain your refund from that retailer.
While it is disappointing to see a service leave our shores it demonstrates that all is not well with Pandora with their business model possibly not working as well as it should.
For those who used Pandora a lot there are many other options — my go-to music solutions are now Google Play Music (for my music) and Spotify (when the kids want to listen to their music so they do not pollute my feed with their rubbish). Spotify have a free, ad-supported version if that is your preference as well.
Update:
Optus has advised that, in light of this announcement Pandora will be removed from their list of data free Music streaming partners as of the 31st of July. Optus will continue to offer data free Music streaming with Google Play Music, iHeartRadio and Spotify.
Will this affect you? What service are you moving to instead of Pandora?
Thats a real bummer I lover pandora – i font get it if im asubscriber of a streaming service why it matters where I am domiciled?
Doesn’t effect me…I use i-heart music
That’s gonna piss Holden off. They made a big hoo ha bag in 2013 when they brought out the VF and raved on and on about it having Pandora support.
And Mazda for the same reason.