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NEW YORK—Pandora Media inc., the firm that runs the popular Internet radio service Pandora, has raised its initial public offering (IPO) hopes by increasing its target price range to more than $10 per share. Attempting to capture sizzling Internet IPO market demand, Pandora raised its IPO share price range from between $7 and $9 to between $10 and $12 per share, the Oakland-based media group said last week. The price would value the company at more than $1.9 billion. Pandora provides streaming music through the Internet. It licenses the music it broadcasts from studios, but does not charge a fee for most Internet listeners. It generates revenues from advertising. In the company’s S-1 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, last year, Pandora’s royalty fees to music publishers and artists was around 49 percent of its gross revenues. Pandora is one of the biggest Internet radio providers in the industry, but the industry almost faced extinction four years ago when the Copyright Royalty Board demanded that Internet radio firms increase their royalty rates. The rate hike would have bankrupted most Internet music websites. A compromise was reached in 2008, facilitated by Congress, and Pandora and other Internet radio sites signed new deals, which tied their royalty payments to revenues and other factors. but in the company’s S-1, Pandora disclosed that its music royalty rates may increase substantially over the next few years, especially after its current agreement expires in 2015. “We do not know what rates will be available to us following that period and there is no guarantee that the royalty structure that emerged from the negotiations with SoundExchange pursuant to the Webcaster Settlement Acts will be available after 2015,” the company disclosed in its filing. IPO Too Expensive?