Pandora commands higher than average ad rates. Remnant (which is bargin basement inventory) is somewhere around $5cpm and I don't think they sell to networks for display to keep demand high. It's actually hard to get inventory there unless you are a premium buyer. For those of you who don't know or care much about online ads, all this basically means is that almost every other publisher (Huffpost, whatever) would kill to Pandora's rates. The fact that they aren't incredibly profitable shows how tough the business is. God knows how Grooveshark makes any money.
Yeah, can't get it here in Europe too. Thus I've thrown something together to get it running over TOR. Luckily only the control interface checks if your IP is from the US. The traffic heavy so streaming doesn't have to go over TOR.
"About 86 percent of Pandora’s revenues ($78 million) comes from advertising, the rest ($12 million) comes from subscriptions."
which made me think, wow, Pandora is kind of like a newspaper, magazine, or cable TV network!