Pandora is the world's most popular online radio station. It streams music catered to your tastes (thanks to a complicated algorithm) to your computer or your iPhone, and believe it or not, it's free. It survives thanks to a few ads on the webpage, but until now there were no audio ads interrupting the music. We're pretty sure that's one of the reasons it's so popular!

Unfortunately, the site has been struggling despite its vast army of users. Royalty fees for online radio are exorbitantly high, and to survive, Pandora's management has elected to slip in 15-second ads inbetween songs. Not in between every song, mind you; according to The Daily Geek, an ad plays after 10 songs, and then again after 20, and only for some users. Pandora's head honcho claims that you'll hear one ad every two hours.

But you wouldn't quit using the service on account of 15 seconds every two hours, would you? Well, some folks would. There's already been a slight rebellion of Pandora users. Some insist they'll never visit the site again, even though Pandora promises the ads will never be as common (or, we hope, as irritating) as those on broadcast radio.

You can't have everything for free, right? Maybe in the post-Napster and BitTorrent era people expect to get music for free. It doesn't seem to be a reasonable expectation, though.

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