Pandora
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.
Pandora has caught in the public domain and currently has more than one million users. It has also become one of the best applications for streaming music on the iPhone.[2]
Contents
How Pandora Works
User Experience
The user is able to input a song or artist of their choice, which Pandora uses to create a station that plays similar music. Users can to create different stations for varied musical interests. By utilizing "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" buttons, Pandora is able to better tailor the music it plays to meet your interests. As Pandora learns more about what you like and dislike, it updates your station accordingly - for example, thumbing down two songs by an artist will ban that artist from your station (preventing other songs from the artist from playing on the station in the future).[3]
Pandora also allows users to add artists or add songs to existing stations in order to give stations more diversity in music.
Technical
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[4] which include genre, structure, mood, style, and lyrical content.[5]. Human analysts are used because computers may miss subtleties in lyrical and emotional aspects songs. [5] The charecterics in the database are used in combination with user history by a recommender system to suggest music that users might like. [5]
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, and the app is the second most-downloaded free iPhone app of all time, according to Apple.
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 you’ve done on the social network, your Pandora profile will show what stations you’ve created, tracks you’ve bookmarked, and tracks you’ve given a thumbs up or down to. Also, an activity feed works somewhat in the same way as your Facebook News Feed, and allows you to follow friends on the service as well as see what tunes 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.[6]
History
Music Genome Project
Work on the Music Genome Project began in 1999 after Westergren began to think about how to categorize music. [7] 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. [7]
The Music Genome Project is an essential part of how Pandora became the successful application it is today. The Music Genome Project is said to be "the most sophisticated taxonomy of musical information ever collected"; it has taken millions of songs and sorted them into different radio stations based on similarity.[4]
In order to categorize songs, an analyst rates a song on a scale from 1 to 10 in each of 450 musical characteristics.[7] [4] The factors analyzed include the lyrical content of a song, instruments, rythm, and many others. [7] Humans are used to analyze the songs rather than computers because the founders worry that automated analysis will miss subtlty and emotion in the songs.[7] 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". [4] Pandora puts a great deal of time and energy into being as thorough as possible with each individual song.
Pandora Radio
Tranditional vs. Web Radio Services
Traditional radio plays the same songs for all users listening at any given time, which means it lacks the uniqueness and individuality that Pandora offers. However, traditional radio stations do not have to pay a fee each time they play a song.[8]
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. Also, 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. For example, Wiz Khalifa Radio, and East Coast Hip-Hop Radio.
Pulling the Plug?
Streaming music online has become an increasing problem. Web Radios were recently hit with major fees, which require that Pandora pay for each individual song they play. Over the past four years, The Copyright Royalty Board has increased the cost of each song that Web Radios play from 8/100 of a cent per song per listener to 19/100 of a cent per song.[9] With 40,000 new customers a day plus a base of over one million who already use the site, this adds up. In 2010, Pandora estimated their cost for playing music to be over $17 million, which is significantly more than the company generates in revenue from ads.[10] Because of the increasing cost to stream songs online, Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, recently announced that they may have to pull the plug on Pandora.
Ethical Concerns
What (if any) are the ethical concerns of Pandora?
- ↑ http://www.pandora.com/about
- ↑ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503367.html
- ↑ http://www.ehow.com/how_2031306_ban-artist-one.html
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 http://www.pandora.com/about/mgp
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 http://www.inc.com/magazine/20071001/pandoras-long-strange-trip_pagen_2.html
- ↑ http://mashable.com/2012/10/29/pandora-app-update/
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 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.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503367.html
- ↑ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503367.html
