[Disparity]

What PG says is 100% true. I say this having done a startup in the space.

In a nut shell, you need roughly $1M upfront for legal fees to negotiate with the big four record labels (for an interactive service, not a non-interactive service like Pandora).

[emehrkay]

Can you define interactive and non-interactive for me?

[taylorlb]

Perhaps passive radio style listening vs random access is a better way of explaining it. I think.

[whopa]

Yeah, non-interactive is radio style listening whereas interactive the user gets to pick and choose what they want to hear on demand.

Interactive/non-interactive in this context are actually widely used terms in the digital music space.

[eru]

Thanks for the details.

I guess I understand what you mean. Though I wouldn't use the words interactive/non-interactive. Pandora is quite interactive in a UI sense, even though you can't select tracks directly.