Home Your IT Entertainment Pandora's musical box curiously re-opens in Australia
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Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, has sent Mumbrella a letter stating its delight at being able to "bring Pandora back to you" in Australia.

Apparently, Mumbrella is the only Australian news organisation that received a notice from Pandora, but as you can expect in today's ultra connected world, the news has spread rapidly amongst those who love listening to streaming music online.

The letter to Mumbrella, with the story here at Mumbrella's site, notes that Pandora has been busy in the US, but "never gave up" on one day returning to the land down under.

This day has come - since leaving Australia's shores 5 years ago in 2007 when legal troubles saw Pandora's music licensing payment costs double overnight - but despite this setback, Pandora is finally back as a beta service in Australia.

Mr Westergren speaks of Pandora's desire to "completely localize (sic)" the service for Aussies and to bring the "full breadth" of capabilities to we antipodeans - including smartphone apps - soon.

The Pandora founder then asks for feedback on the service, and over what music users want added.

Pandora means "all gifted" in Greek, and she received many gifts from the gods, including the gift of music, while Pandora was also very curious.

She was, according to Wikipedia, meant to be the first woman on Earth, with Pandora also well known for her very famous box, a box she opened that contained all the evils of the world - leading to the term "Pandora's Box".

The modern day Pandora is a music searching box, as well as part of Pandora's Music Genome Project, which it started back in the year 2000.

Costs for the US version of Pandora at US $3.99 per month or US $36 a year, prices which will presumably be higher once they are disclosed for Australians.

Pandora's service now joins Rdio, MOG, JB HiFi's service, one from Sony and even Spotify in Australia, with Aussies going from a relative drought of legally available streaming music to a veritable flood of the musical stuff.

So, while the piracy and copyright wars around illegal music downloads certainly aren't over on a global scale, legal streaming has certainly come of age.

The only question is which streaming music box you'll choose to use, if any at all, or whether your current CD and iTunes collection is enough to keep you aurally satisfied.

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Alex Zaharov-Reutt

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One of Australia’s best-known technology journalists and consumer tech experts, Alex has appeared in his capacity as technology expert on all of Australia’s free-to-air and pay TV networks, including stints as presenter of Ch 10’s Internet Bright Ideas, Ch 7’s Room for Improvement and tech expert on Ch 9’s Today Show, among many other news and current affairs programs.

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