Growing up in the eighties, Madonna was the cool older sisters you wish you had. So hearing that she turned fifty last week made a lot of those former 80s girls feel a little, well, old.

Here's what Betty Rocker had to say about a recent trek to the Rock "n' Roll Hal of fame, and one youngster's reaction to a Madonna display:

This little kid in front of me turn to his dad and said "Is Madonna still alive???"The father, completely embarrassed that his song would ask such a bad question in public turned and told him, "Uh yes, she is".I looked at the kid and added "She's 50."His eyes got super wide when I said that. I may as well have said she turned 100.

Ouch. Jocelyn Novak of the Huffington Post wrote a lengthy article about Madge and "the New 50."

But as the Material Girl hits the half-century mark this weekend, she may be stepping into a role that even she, with all her marketing savvy, might not have dreamed up: poster child for the 50-and-fabulous set.

So as many of us who came of age in the 80s creep closer to that forty mark, are we ready for our idols to become senior citizens? Should it really matter?

... 

Looks like more trouble for internet radio and its fans. Venerable online radio site, Pandora, faces shutting its doors due to the high royalty fees. Rachel Webster of Paste Magazine writes:

The problem is royalty fees exacted by a federal panel. Last year, the panel doubled the fees a webcaster has to pay per listener per song, meaning Pandora will pay 70 percent of its expected $25 million revenue, according to Westergren. Traditional radio outlets, on the other hand, pay no such fees to artists, and satellite radio stations pay smaller fees.

This comes on the heels of another popular music site, Muxtape, under pressure from the RIAA, temporarily going offline.

...Muxtape users found the site unavailable, replaced by a message saying, “Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.” The site usually allows users to create playlists online and share them with others through streaming.

Caroline McCarthy of CNET allows for some hope, however:

A few Web geeks weren't convinced that Pandora's situation is as dire as Westergren says it is. "I love Pandora like my old baseball glove, but they can only pull this Chicken Little move so many times," marketing consultant Brian Oberkirch posted to Twitter on Monday morning.

So how does all this affect fans of online radio? As of today, Pandora is still up and running, and even added some improvements, making giving a song a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" a little more user friendly. Newcomers like imeem are flourishing, and Last.FM, who recently underwent a a huge makeover, remains a major player, but only time will tell if royalty fees "kill the internet radio star." Enjoy it while it lasts.