The Pandora One Subscription Service To Cost $5 A Month

Pandora is getting a little more expensive. Starting in May, and for new subscribers, the Pandora One monthly subscription service will cost $5. Existing subscribers that remain active will keep paying $3.99 a month to listen to Pandora without any ads.

As Pandora notes in a blog post, the subscription service hasn’t had a price hike since 2009 when it debuted for $36 a year. Later, Pandora offered to bill the service monthly $3.99. Pandora blames the new, higher price on the increased cost Pandora incurs on delivering songs, nearly magically, to any device you own.

Only 3.3 million of Pandora’s 250 million registered users currently subscribe to Pandora one. And Pandora is taking good care of the one percenters by not increasing their monthly bill — something Amazon likely considered before increasing the cost of its Prime subscription service.

As streaming music service become more mainstream, the cost of doing business is increasing as royalty rates and the cost of doing business increases. Amazon is the big player in this market. If Amazon has to increase prices, chances are Spotify, Rdio and the others are looking to it as well.