Pandora will place users on a 40-hour-per-month limit for free...

three years and is set to rise up to 16 percent over the next two years, Pandora Founder Tim Westergren said Wednesday in a blog post. “After a close look at our overall listening, a 40-hour-per-month mobile listening limit allows us to manage these escalating costs with minimal listener disruption,” he said. Pandora “will be sure” to alert listeners who near the 40-hour limit, Westergren said. The limit will affect less than 4 percent of Pandora’s more than 65 million customers -- the average customer uses the service only for 20 hours per month over all devices, Westergren said. Customers who hit the 40-hour limit can pay $0.99 for unlimited listening over the rest of the month, or can subscribe to the $36-a-year Pandora One service, which allows unlimited listening and features no advertising. Listeners will also continue to have unlimited access to Pandora on desktop and laptop computers, he said (http://bit.ly/Z0eu0l). Pandora’s decision is not surprising given that the company has been “consistently operating with yearly losses” under the compulsory license regime, Public Knowledge Staff Attorney Jodie Griffin told us. It’s not clear how the decision will impact Pandora and the webcasting business in general, but “if this becomes a trend for webcasters and leads to less online radio listening overall, it’s hard to see how that’s a victory for musicians or audiences,” she said.