I don't like Pandora

[nd2023]

I decided to try Pandora and its music selection sucked for my favorite format (dance). It had very little new music, and the playlist was seemingly random, it didn't play the hits more frequently than the recurrents. Of course, no mixshows and definitely no audio processing. No sweepers between the songs, and forced advertisements (that aren't even local), and a limited number of skips. A computer cannot replace a PD, Pandora just seems soulless. That's why I will stick to listening to my list of independent Internet and terrestrial stations for dance music. I can flip between them any number of times, only the terrestrial stations have ads, there's a PD picking out the music and how much each song is played, and there are on-air personalities that help forge a "connection" between the station and the listeners. Plus it just feels nice to know that hundreds or thousands of other people are also listening to the same thing I am.

I don't like that average people only exclusively listen to Pandora when there are thousands of independent Internet stations around the world in every format. Instead of making a mega-corporation bigger, why not support the independent stations?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Read your own message through about three times and maybe the following answer will make sense.

YOU want what YOU WANT. So you go and fetch what YOU WANT.

Some people LIKE Pandora. (I don't). So these people go and fetch what they WANT. They go Pandora.

Are you demanding that THE REST OF US are obligated to like what YOU like.

Think about it.

 

[MattParker]

Nick, you didn't pay attention. Pandora is programmed by some computer algorithm. It plays music in a particular genre you selected. You tell it what you like and what you don't like. And the computer learns and starts picking music you like and music that's like what you say you like. It also avoids music you say you don't like and music like it. The more feedback you give it, the better it gets at picking music for you.

 

[J. Rob]

^^^It's still pretty much an ipod on shuffle. I prefer Live365 and Shoutcast.

 

[landtuna]

I don't find Pandora useful either. Why spend time and energy encouraging Pandora's "computer" to learn my likes and dislikes when I can populate my MP3 player much faster and never play music I dislike.

 

[MattParker]

I don't find Pandora useful either. Why spend time and energy encouraging Pandora's "computer" to learn my likes and dislikes when I can populate my MP3 player much faster and never play music I dislike.

Because you have to buy the music with which you populate your mp3 player (assuming you stay legal). Because you only populate your player with the music you already know you like; Pandora, with a larger library than any sane person could go to the time, trouble and expensive to build, might find something new you didn't know you'd like.

I can appreciate that many here see Pandora as a threat and therefore are disposed to knock it but it's batting average, even with minimal user rating, is far better than that of any PD who makes his living telling me what to like and possibly influenced by label representatives and any payola they dish out. Whoops, sorry, I forgot. It's only "payola" if a DJ gets it; not if the station gets it.

 

[landtuna]

I don't find Pandora useful either. Why spend time and energy encouraging Pandora's "computer" to learn my likes and dislikes when I can populate my MP3 player much faster and never play music I dislike.

Because you have to buy the music with which you populate your mp3 player (assuming you stay legal). Because you only populate your player with the music you already know you like; Pandora, with a larger library than any sane person could go to the time, trouble and expensive to build, might find something new you didn't know you'd like.

I already own virtually all of the music I like but I also listen to services such as Radio Free Phoenix for anything new I might want to add. Unfortunately, with the current state of the music industry, there is not much new music I want to hear on a recurring basis.

If I wasn't clear before....I have tried Pandora but found the "computer" has a very different idea of song association than I do. After playing one song I did like it served up four-in-a-row that it thought I would like, but didn't. I found it a huge waste of time. Just MHO of course and YMMV.

 

[Casey]

I've never been a fan of Pandora either. It serves up loads of songs I do not like every time I give it a try.

I have tried Slacker and I must say it is one of the best services I have used. It has a much wider library than Pandora. It also does not label songs like Pandora does, as far as if it thinks I will like it or not. Pandora feels the need to tell me what I like even if I don't.

Shoutcast has a few good stations, but most of the stations on there are made by either major music broadcasting groups or people who have 100 MP3's on their playlist that are either the newest songs out there or classics at random. None of which fit my tastes. Accuradio is no better, playing the same songs several times within an hour. I can only stand to listen to it if I use 50+ skips per hour.

 

[MattParker]

I've never been a fan of Pandora either. It serves up loads of songs I do not like every time I give it a try.

I have tried Slacker and I must say it is one of the best services I have used. It has a much wider library than Pandora. It also does not label songs like Pandora does, as far as if it thinks I will like it or not. Pandora feels the need to tell me what I like even if I don't.

Shoutcast has a few good stations, but most of the stations on there are made by either major music broadcasting groups or people who have 100 MP3's on their playlist that are either the newest songs out there or classics at random. None of which fit my tastes. Accuradio is no better, playing the same songs several times within an hour. I can only stand to listen to it if I use 50+ skips per hour.

I do listen to Pandora. Yes, I have had to be diligent about rating everything I play but it does get better in making choices for me over time. As far as computer-generated audio streams go, it has a better batting average for me than CBS-owned Last.FM (which I listen to on my phone because Pandora does not have an app for my phone's operating system).

I have found a few audio streams I like on Live365, and more often than not I listen to one of them. The trick in programmed (by a person) audio streams is finding somebody who can consistently program stuff you like - out of thousands of streams. It is a needle in a haystack proposition.

I imagine the computer will eventually win, once somebody really identifies the qualities and characteristics that make us like one recording and dislike another.

 

[landtuna]

I imagine the computer will eventually win, once somebody really identifies the qualities and characteristics that make us like one recording and dislike another.

Having been a computer programmer most of my life I'm not so sure. The computer has been programmed by a person and doesn't have any additional intelligence than given it by the programmer. Therefore, you are listening to music selected by a person and not some super-introspective device.

Secondly, the computer has absolutely no insight into your emotions or experiences. It might think you like a particular song based upon the song itself having no idea it was your first love's favorite. It will then select more songs similar to that first one but you have no emotional attachment to them. If you kill these, you, by association, kill the first one.

The computer may eventually weed out those you don't like and serve up those you mostly do but like horseshoes and hand grenades it can come only so close. In the meantime how much time have you spent "programming" the computer?

 

[MattParker]

Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.

Pandora is based on something called "the music genome project.:"

The Music Genome Project®

On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

Since we started back in 2000, we've carefully listened to the songs of tens of thousands of different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

It seems to work like a match-making program. Songs are coded by the characteristics mentioned above. If you say you like a song with particular characteristics, it finds others with those same characteristics. If you say you don't like a song with certain characteristics, it avoids others like it. There is no program director selecting songs.

And you don't have to "program" anything. You just give songs you hear "thumbs up" or "thumbs down."

 

[RDO]

I've tried it and I have to give too many thumbs down to what it thinks I like.

 

[Casey]

One major problem with Pandora is their "experts" rank music to how they see fit. This is all fine except for one problem. If the experts do not like the music they are hearing, they will not add the music. This is one reason Pandora has such a small library compared to nearly every other service. Last I checked Pandora had less than 1 million songs in their library. Slacker I believe is up to 6 million, Spotify has over 10million (though not yet in USA). This is a problem, though very few notice because they do not take to time to dig deep into the library.

Pandora is also not innovative. The only thing they have done is made a GNOME-project. They have been widely implemented in many devices, but I would not consider that innovative. Other than that, all they have done is whine about high royalties and a lack of money. The GNOME projects accuracy is rarely better than Slacker/last.fm's accuracy. The only thing the GNOME project does do is take a considerable amount of cash to implement. If we look at how other companies stack-up to Pandora, Pandora has not really accomplished much at all. Slacker was first to have portables, first to support Caching (Pandora still lacks), first to Canada (versus Pandora). It offers a Plus service with far more bonuses than Pandora One and they are now launching an On-demand service and support for Symbian phones. Spotify offers a revolutionary on-demand model. Last.fm offers a wide community-driven experience. Jango and Last.fm are both working on promoting independent artists (more than other services). Meanwhile Pandora implemented a 40 hour limit... that can be bypassed because they stored the usage info on the users computer....

Notice Pandora also claims they must charge you $1 per month if you listen more than 40 hours per month. They claim that royalties have forced them to do this. From a logical standpoint, they must fail at advertising because they cannot break even. However, it can be assumed that they are indeed breaking even, otherwise they would not be profitable, which they are (or claim they are). If they are breaking even, then the 40 hour limit makes no sense unless they just want to squeeze more money out people. Royalties are high, that cannot be denied. Yet, they are the only company in the USA to enable a limit on usage per month. Slacker admitted they are making nice revenues off free users. In fact they are now offering the free service to Canada where royalties are much higher.

 

[TheBigA]

Pandora is also not innovative. The only thing they have done is made a GNOME-project.

And that was ten years ago. I really believe that there has been a concerted effort to prevent competition in this area, because people who've tried Spotify in other countries say it's superior. But Pandora is the favorite of the US music industry. Pandora has played the political game very well, and have SoundExchange and the RIAA on their side. That makes it tough for other competitors. Things may change, however. Pandora is trying to be reclassified in a way that will cut their royalty obligation. That would hurt their relations with the labels.

 

[radioguy39nj]

The CEO of Pandora recently made a bold statement, "We want to be in every car, on every phone!" Haven't tried Pandora yet, so I have no opinion of it. If Pandora gets into more cars, Sirius/XM could have a problem on their hands.

Mercedes-Benz recently added a Pandora app to its radios. It always starts with luxury brands then works its way to popular priced cars. :-\

Here's the link:
http://www.radio-info.com/news/pand...-be-in-every-single-car-on-every-single-phone

 

[MattParker]

The Pandora CEO in the same statement said he wants to be in every phone, too. Problem is, they don't have a Pandora app for the world's most widely-used smart phone OS. No app; no Pandora.

 

[radioguy39nj]

The Pandora CEO in the same statement said he wants to be in every phone, too. Problem is, they don't have a Pandora app for the world's most widely-used smart phone OS. No app; no Pandora.

Right now, Sirius/XM is available on most smartphones. CEO's always talk big. Let's see if the Pandora CEO can deliver.

 

[imhomerjay]

I have Pandora on my Android and iPod Touch, and use it on my computer frequently. Sure it sometimes guesses I might like a song because it has certain characteristics with another song I told it I did like. Big deal--it's not like there's a radio station out there that will play only what I like and never something I don't. I give it a thumbs down and move on (unlike the radio). I like that it sometimes gives me the opportunity to experience something I haven't heard before precisely because I may not realize what it is about a particular song I like--just that I do. By hearing something else that shares a trait, I sometimes find new things I do enjoy.

The beauty is there are lots of options out there. Some will be right for one person, another for someone else.

 

[Casey]

Pandora on an Iphone is not wise unless you love to give them your personal information. Contacts, location, etc.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704368004576027751867039730.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

 

[Casey]

Well Pandora is planning their $100 million IPO. I personally feel it is going to be a big waste.

The whole industry I personally feel will collapse if it continues at this rate. We already have Pandora, Slacker, Last.fm, Accuradio, CBS radio services (AOL, Yahoo) and Jango as the major customizable music services and Grooveshark, Myspace, Rhapsody, Napster, Mog, Zune, and Rdio as our on-demand services. Slacker is planning a new on-demand service, Spotify will launch eventually. Clear Channel is planning a Pandora-like service, as is Sirius/XM. Sony just launched a new on-demand/radio service. Google and Apple are both expected to launch services sometime in the future. We have dozens of small niche services and tens-of-thousands of streaming stations. We have search-engine based services such as playlist.com. There is also constant pressure from satellite and broadcast radio, along with their web streams. Can the internet market really sustain this many services when nearly all the current services are losing money?

So far we have only lost Imeem, Yahoo music, and spiral-frog as major services. None of them could make money. Who is next?

If I had to guess, I would guess that this year Grooveshark will get shutdown, Myspace will leave the music business, and we will lose many streaming stations.