New York Times on Pandora, etc.: "The New Tastemakers"

http://ilx.thehold.net/thread.php?msgid=2887#unread

Big article about Pandora in the Sunday NY Times Arts & Leisure section. There's a photo of all these Pandora employees in a conference room with headphones hooked up to their computers entering in data. I think that might make me hate music.
-- curmudgeon (curmudgeo...), September 4th, 2006.

"New generations of wireless Internet-connected devices will vault the Web’s customized radio services into places where broadcast radio is still dominant: in cars for example. “All of a sudden the competition for your ear there changes dramatically,� Mr. Westergren said. “The FM station then has to compete with a personalized service that you’ve crafted for yourself. That’s a watershed moment.�"

(mix-tapes and CD mixes to thread)

x-post:

Tapes are great for cars.

Meanwhile, I may be high, but I think scrobbling has the potential to provide something genuinely useful and new: a real, unmediated viewport into what actual (well-off) people (with nice computers and persistent network connections) are really listening to. It's invariably fascinating to read the last.fm charts, although kind of gutwrenching: as long as I've been a member of Audioscrobbler / last.fm, "Such Great Heights" has been on the top 10. It took me under a month to get completely over the Postal Service's cheesetronica, and it's demoralizing to realize that Ben Gibbard was really what IDM needed to bust out of the ghetto and into the hearts of millions.

And predictably, the rest of the stuff in the upper reaches of the charts is crap too, but at least it's *different* crap than you see on the charts on Rhapsody or Napster or even Billboard, and it seems more plugged into what the kidz actually have playing in their dorm rooms and cubicles and suburban bedrooms. I refuse to believe there's a massive demographic of 15-year-olds out there who really believe in their burning young souls that believe Rascal Flatts, Jack Johnson, and James motherfucking Blunt are where it's at, although I can buy all too easily that the poor deluded tinies really do think that Panic! At The Disco speak authentically to their struggle. In my darker nights of the soul I find myself wondering if I would have been suckered by that particular scam when I was still a tiny motile fountain of fear and angst myself. Anyway.

There's a whole bunch of these services, and they all seem to be interesting for reasons other than the ones their executives go around trumpeting. We have like five billion different ways to replicate the radio experience, and beyond the vast improvement of not having to listen to ads or the painfully inept attempts at entertainment foisted off in the name of "drive-time entertainment" (guess who's an NPR listener), they're all the same old model. I really don't get why all these suits think we need new ways to listen to the radio, beyond their inability to imagine a world free of iPods on the one hand (although that's exactly what everyone who is not Apple is desperately praying for) and sweaty nerds tethered to their internet connections at all times on the other.

Summary: Pandora's a cool way to discover new music free from peer pressure. Last.fm is a cool way to ladle peer pressure over the top. Rhapsody / Napster / SpiralFrog are a way to get access to more music than you can possibly handle (I myself spent the afternoon plowing through the ABBA catalogue, and my inner 7-year-old was deeply satisfied). If they weren't all so paranoid about defending their "revenue models", we might be able to lash them all together into something really cool. But instead they'll all sit around in their balkanized state, hoping to either retain control over their IP or somehow snatch victory from Bubble 2.0's yawning jaws of defeat.

hi, it's Tim,

This is an email I hoped I would never have to send.

As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.

Based upon the IP address from which you recently visited Pandora, it appears that you are listening from the UK. If you are, in fact, listening from the US, please contact Pandora Support: pandora-supp✧✧✧@pand✧✧✧.c✧✧.

It continues to astound me and the rest of the team here that the industry is not working more constructively to support the growth of services that introduce listeners to new music and that are totally supportive of paying fair royalties to the creators of music. I don't often say such things, but the course being charted by the labels and publishers and their representative organizations is nothing short of disastrous for artists whom they purport to represent - and by that I mean both well known and indie artists. The only consequence of failing to support companies like Pandora that are attempting to build a sustainable radio business for the future will be the continued explosion of piracy, the continued constriction of opportunities for working musicians, and a worsening drought of new music for fans. As a former working musician myself, I find it very troubling.

We have been told to sign these totally unworkable license rates or switch off, non-negotiable...so that is what we are doing. Streaming illegally is just not in our DNA, and we have to take the threats of legal action seriously. Lest you think this is solely an international problem, you should know that we are also fighting for our survival here in the US, in the face of a crushing increase in web radio royalty rates, which if left unchanged, would mean the end of Pandora.

We know what an epicenter of musical creativity and fan support the UK has always been, which makes the prospect of not being able to launch there and having to block our first listeners all the more upsetting for us.

We know there is a lot of support from listeners and artists in the UK for Pandora and remain hopeful that at some point we'll get beyond this. We're going to keep fighting for a fair and workable rate structure that will allow us to bring Pandora back to you. We'll be sure to let you know if Pandora becomes available in the UK. There may well come a day when we need to make a direct appeal for your support to move for governmental intervention as we have in the US. In the meantime, we have no choice but to turn off service to the UK.

Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008.

Again, on behalf of all of us at Pandora, I'm very, very sorry.

tim_signature.jpg

-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)
This is a one-time account message

Just a matter of time before these guys are shut down totally, but to be honest, I got over the loss pretty quickly once they stopped streaming internationallly. C'est la vie.

Last.FM still works everywhere, though, which suggests that there would be some kind of solution if Pandora really wanted to find it.

Just to be nitpicky, that's really not what a "tastemaker" is (i.e. it doesn't really apply to sites like Pandora)

Sometimes this site is really frustrating. I don't want songs with "similar musical qualities," I want more GOOD songs

Unable to use Pandora outside the USA, I've reluctantly retreated to last.fm. I am very grateful for the latter, don't get me wrong, and I can see the many advantages of the latter's approach. I especially like setting up radio stations via tags, eg '8-bit' or 'twee'. However, for sheer objective stylistic connection-finding, it doesn't have the adventitious inspiration of Pandora. For example, if I plug my own band in, I get a lot of very drab, boring goth music that is sort of on point, insofar as it represents what our audience is listening to, more's the pity. Realistically this music has nothing to do with my band's range of influence, as it's too one-sided. When I google the Myspace pages of the groups linked to my band on Pandora (can't listen to the radio station unfortunately), I get material that's much more on the ball. It's many-sided, not merely blandly goth, but picking up on all kinds of genuine influences, from punk to electro to basic stuff like who-gives-a-shit female vocals (try getting female vocals for any length of time on Pandora - the switch to male vocals is fast and permanent, unless you specifically search for female vocals). I don't find last.fm eclectic enough - the associations made are rather dull, to be honest. It makes mediocre, facile associations. It's lacks the surprise of objective insight, it's too dull-normal, and too normative.

Corrrection: the phrase:

'(try getting female vocals for any length of time on Pandora - the switch to male vocals is fast and permanent, unless you specifically search for female vocals)'

should read:

'(try getting female vocals for any length of time on last.fm - the switch to male vocals is fast and permanent, unless you specifically search for female vocals)'

Another NY Times article on Pandora. This one contrasts the "music genome" approach of Pandora - in which committees of musicologists break down and categorize songs according to quantitative metrics - with the "social networking" music sites like last.fm, which rely on recommendations from listeners with similar tastes. Discusses the difficulties in separating the way music sounds from the cultural factors that influence appreciation:

He likes to tell a story about a Pandora user who wrote in to complain that he started a station based on the music of Sarah McLachlan, and the service served up a Celine Dion song. "I wrote back and said, 'Was the music just wrong?' Because we sometimes have data errors," he recounts. "He said, 'Well, no, it was the right sort of thing — but it was Celine Dion.' I said, 'Well, was it the set, did it not flow in the set?' He said, 'No, it kind of worked — but it’s Celine Dion.' We had a couple more back-and-forths, and finally his last e-mail to me was: 'Oh, my God, I like Celine Dion.' "

Maybe the more vivid illustration of social influence on listening habits isn't in what we share but in what we obfuscate. Last.fm, for example, publishes a chart listing the songs that its users most frequently delete from their public listening-stream data. The guilty pleasure Top 10 is dominated by the most radio-ready pop artists — Katy Perry’s "I Kissed a Girl," several tracks by Lady Gaga. The service iLike compiles similar data on the most "suppressed" songs its users listen to in secret; Britney Spears figures prominently. Apparently even listeners who can set aside certain cultural information long enough to enjoy something uncool would just as soon their friends didn't know. Maybe even in our most private listening moments, what our peers think matters.

Pandora CEO Kennedy Resigning Following Latest Losses

Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy announced he will be stepping down from his post, following the popular digital music service's latest quarterly losses. Kennedy said he will remain with the company until his successor can be found. In a statement, Kennedy said, "As I near the start of my tenth year at the helm of Pandora, I am incredibly proud of the team and what we have accomplished in redefining radio. As part of our Board discussions of the road that lies ahead, I reached the conclusion and advised the Board that the time is right to begin a process to identify my successor. There is a tremendous market opportunity ahead and I look forward to continuing to work with all the great people at Pandora to keep driving the business forward."

"Over the last nine years I have enjoyed an extraordinary partnership with Joe, working with him to grow the company and build an exceptional team," said Tim Westergren, Pandora Founder and Chief Strategy Officer. "I look forward to continuing to work with Joe to achieve our goals for 2013 and to help assure a smooth leadership transition."

In Q4, Pandora saw its net loss widen to $14.5 million, up from $8.2 million a year ago. For the company's full fiscal year, it took a $38.1 million net loss, more than twice its net loss for the previous fiscal year. Despite the increase in losses, Pandora's revenue had an impressive 54 percent increase in the quarter, from $81 million to $125 million. Mobile revenue more than doubled in Q4 as well, to $80.3 million. For the full fiscal year, revenue for Pandora was up 56 percent to $427.1 million, while mobile revenue for the entire year was up to $255.9 million.

Pandora also said that its number of active listeners rose 37 percent to 67.7 million at the end of February 2013, compared to February 2012. Listening hours jumped 42 percent to 1.38 billion.

Following Kennedy's announcement and the company's fiscal report, Pandora stocks jumped by 20 percent on Wall Street.

FMQB

What kind of business model can have revenue and customers increasing by leaps and bounds but see corresponding numbers in financial losses?

The kind of business model that, when the CEO announces he is leaving, the value jumps 20% on Wall Street, apparently.

*shakes head*