Difference between revisions of "Pandora"
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Revision as of 21:48, 4 December 2012
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Pandora Radio is a free personalized radio in which users can listen to music with similar musical attributes (rhythm syncopation, key tonality, vocal harmonies, etc). Pandora's mission is to "play music that the user loves".[1] The site started in 2000 and music analysts have continued to develop methods of playing songs that have similar qualities.
Contents
How Pandora Works
User Experience
Pandora allows users to create stations from one or more songs a user chooses as "seeds".[2] A station can be further tailored by giving individual songs queued a "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" via buttons on individual songs.[2] When a song is rated as liked or disliked by a user, the station it was played on is updated by adding songs the music database rates as similar to liked songs and by preventing songs similar to the disliked songs from being queued[3] Pandora also allows users to add artists or add songs to existing stations in order to give stations more diversity in music.[3] In order to avoid wasting money by playing music to an empty room, Pandora is able to detect when interaction between the user and Pandora has not occurred recently. When this detection is made, the music stops and a message pops up reading, "Are you still listening?" If the user is still using Pandora, they can simply click "Yes," and if not, Pandora is saving money and allowing the internet radio to remain free to all users.[4]
Song Recommendation
Human Analysts enter songs into the Music Genome Project database by rating each on a scale from 1 to 10 for each of 450 criteria[5] which include genre, structure, mood, style, and lyrical content.[6] Human analysts are used because computers may miss subtleties in lyrical and emotional aspects songs.[6] The charecterics in the database are used in combination with user history by a recommender system to suggest music that users might like.[6]
Analysts for the Music Genome Project aren't just ordinary musicians; they are required to have certain training and certain understandings about how to identify the characteristics of a song. The Music Genome Project's database uses "precisely defined terminology, a consistent frame of reference, redundant analysis, and ongoing quality control".[5]
Tranditional vs. Web Radio Services
Traditional radio plays the same songs for all users listening at any given time, which might lead to a lack of the uniqueness and individuality that music listeners are seeking. Pandora can offer these opportunities but at a monetary consequence such as royalty fees . In contrast, traditional radio stations do not have to pay a fee each time they play a song.[7]
Pandora, on the other hand, allows for individuality and creativity by allowing users to have greater control over what songs they hear. While there may be many people using Pandora at once, each one may be listening to a different song. Pandora simultaneously streams separate songs for multiple individual users at once, something that traditional radios do not have the capacity to do. Pandora has a much greater variety in genres, artists, and types of music than traditional radio play. It has specialized playlists for certain artists, as well as playlists catered towards specific genres, locations, etc. Examples are Wiz Khalifa Radio, and East Coast Hip-Hop Radio.
Mobile App
Pandora has an application for Blackberry, Android, an iOS platforms. It was recently updated in the end of October 2012. Officially called Pandora 4.0, the updated app finally brings features that have been available with the web version of Pandora to mobile phones.
Currently it is one of the most downloaded apps in the United States: 1 in every 3 smartphone owners have accessed Pandora on their smartphone. Additionally, the app is the second most-downloaded free iPhone app of all time, according to Apple.[8]
The Pandora Radio app has a social media aspect as it offers a more personalized experience. The app gives each Pandora listener his or her own profile page. This functions much like a Facebook profile, as it shows what an individual has done on the social network. Pandora profile will also show what the individual's created stations, bookmarked tracks, and tracks given a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Also, an activity feed works similarly to a Facebook News Feed- it allows one to follow friends on this service as well as see what tunes other Pandora listeners with similar interests are listening to.
The Pandora app also gives Artists also have their own Artist pages in the updated app with biography and discography information. If you’re particularly fond of an artist, the Artist page also shows similar artists, so you can potentially discover someone new while browsing. This also includes being able to access lyrics to songs played on Pandora.
Recently, Microsoft also announced that Pandora would be coming to Windows Phone 8 in 2013. When the app launches, they have said that it will give Windows Phone users ad-free radio for 1 year.[9]
History
Music Genome Project
In 1999, Westergren formed a company called Savage Beast Industries with his friends Jon Kraft and Will Glaser.[10] Westegren worked with his friends to build a company around categorizing and recommending music through a system he named the Music Genome Project.[10] Initially, he came up with roughly 600 qualities or "genes" describing music charecteristics, but narrowed this pool down to around 400 qualities or "genes" after hiring a professional musicologist to assist him. [10]
By March of 2000, Westegren raised $1.5 million by marketing the Music Genome Project as venture capital project to create a music recommendation service.[10] In 2001, he had acquired $20,000 from Barnes & Noble as an investment. Westegren landed contracts with AOL music and Best Buy by the end of 2002 to provide licensing and data services.[10] Despite facing a lawsuit over deferring employee that ended in bankrupcy, Westergren and a few others continued working on the project without funds until 2004 when the company recieved $8 million from Walden Venture Capital, allowing salaries to be paid again.[10] In 2005, Joe Kennedy was hired as CEO and contracts to provide services to large companies fell through, forcing a rethink of Pandora's business model.[10]
Pandora Radio
Pandora launched as a web radio service in September of 2005 using a yearly subscription model with a limited trial.[11] However, they faced problems with capacity and low subscription rates due to users signing up for additional free trials through new email addresses.[11] The company responded by switching to an advertisement-supported business model where users would be served new advertisements.[11] In May of 2007 the Company was forced to block radio access outside of the US, UK, and Canada, but still gave users with subscription accounts access to a form of the music recommendation service.[12]
By 2008, Pandora had become of the top 10 mobile applications on apple's iPhone and had upwards of 1 million users a day.[13] In the same year Westergren acknowledged that the company faced possible collapse due to an increase in royalty fees for web radio services which did not affect traditional radio stations.[14]
Ethical Concerns
A major ethical issue Pandora is currently struggling with is their license deals with the RIAA and various other groups. Currently Pandora pays out millions of dollars to "big-name" artists like Adele and Coldplay, but need to pay even more to the recording companies because of various rules and regulations put in place for over-the-air radio, which Pandora is considered.[15]
Pandora has written a blog post after the Copyright Royalty Board released new rules for fees for internet radio, saying that the RIAA could negatively affect Pandora with their lobbying for higher fees. Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora,was quoted saying that "The RIAA has effectively convinced this federal committee to establish rates that make online radio a non-viable business."[16]
See Also
References
- ↑ http://www.pandora.com/about
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503367_2.html
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 http://www.ehow.com/how_2031306_ban-artist-one.html
- ↑ http://help.pandora.com/customer/portal/articles/24252-%22are-you-still-listening-%22
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 http://www.pandora.com/about/mgp
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 http://www.inc.com/magazine/20071001/pandoras-long-strange-trip_pagen_2.html
- ↑ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503367.html
- ↑ http://www.macstories.net/news/apple-reveals-new-all-time-top-apps-following-25-billion-downloads/
- ↑ http://mashable.com/2012/10/29/pandora-app-update/
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 http://www.inc.com/magazine/20071001/pandoras-long-strange-trip_pagen_2.html
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 http://www.inc.com/magazine/20071001/pandoras-long-strange-trip_pagen_3.html
- ↑ http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/archives/2007/05/breaking-pandor.html
- ↑ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503367.html
- ↑ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503367_3.html
- ↑ http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/archives/2012/10/pandora-and-art.html
- ↑ http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/archives/2007/03/riaas-new-royal.html
