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by shii 5455 days ago
The reason why they don't go full <audio> and whatever is not because of compatibility. It's about security and copyright infringement. It would be free downloads for all and that would make all the RIAA execs they have deals with very mad.

See Froiveshark's cowpewter comment here which goes into better detail about why they did what they did: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1968668
1 comments
starwed 5455 days ago
Are you sure about your claim? The article explicitly claims that they are using HTML5 for audio, with a flash fallback mechanism.
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firefoxman1 5455 days ago
On pandora.com/newpandora it says "The front-end technology has been rebuilt in HTML 5" but doesn't mention anything about the actual playing of the audio.

The whole point of HTML5 tags like <audio> are to make content completely open. Unfortunately, that's the exact opposite of what what any major record label wants. I'm pretty sure they'll use flash in the background to play the audio, even if the entire site all the way down to the progress bar are HTML5.

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