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Pandora

D

dfaulkner

Guest
There was a report about Pandora internet radio on Nightline last night. Probably lots Pandora listeners out there. I hadn't heard of it before last night, but I started listening this morning creating a station with one of my favorite artists, Dinah Washington.
 
They say they have 50 millions listeners (or the Nightline story said that) - but I wonder how many they have at any one time or for any one station.
 
tested said:
They say they have 50 millions listeners (or the Nightline story said that) - but I wonder how many they have at any one time or for any one station.
Click to expand...
Good Question. I created a Pop Standards/Easy Listening station & called it Big Radio. But I'm not sure how anyone else can listen to it unless I email a link to them.
 
I tried Pandora about a year or so ago and gave up on it. A lot of the songs it thought I liked were crap and the repetition was horrendous.
 
I generally prefer Slacker and Last.fm to Pandora. I must, however, admit that I love Pandora when taking long trips. It seems to handle network changes (from 3G to Edge and back) and drop-outs better than most of the other internet radio services. I can listen from my workplace in central Missouri to Springfield, MO, a trip I take at least once-a-month, and never lose Pandora. Slacker and iHeartRadio will drop as soon as I go from 3G to Edge. Yahoo! and AccuRadio will work most, if not all, of the way but tend to have a lot of delays and chopped songs.

I haven't noticed much in terms of song repetition, but I do agree with Neal that there is horrendous repetition. You won't hear very many different artists once you select a radio station. I don't think Neal and I are alone on that. "Pandora fatigue" is becoming a common phrase in trade publications, and, while Pandora leads in session starts, it doesn't do overly well in terms of time spent listening. I seem to remember it gets only about 1.5 hours per session. The only pureplay webcaster that averages more than 3 hours per session is AccuRadio while a fair number of terrestrial broadcasters average more than 3 hours per session with Saga Communications taking the lead.
 
NealH said:
I tried Pandora about a year or so ago and gave up on it. A lot of the songs it thought I liked were crap and the repetition was horrendous.
Click to expand...

Hmm, so it's like any of the Clear channels stations, huh..?
 
dfaulkner said:
tested said:
They say they have 50 millions listeners (or the Nightline story said that) - but I wonder how many they have at any one time or for any one station.
Click to expand...
Good Question. I created a Pop Standards/Easy Listening station & called it Big Radio. But I'm not sure how anyone else can listen to it unless I email a link to them.
Click to expand...

_________________________________________________

http://www.pandora.com/stations/4f53c7d43c47d80bf291fac33bf40bfb8431ac386469d6d1
 
copydesk2 said:
dfaulkner said:
tested said:
They say they have 50 millions listeners (or the Nightline story said that) - but I wonder how many they have at any one time or for any one station.
Click to expand...
Good Question. I created a Pop Standards/Easy Listening station & called it Big Radio. But I'm not sure how anyone else can listen to it unless I email a link to them.
Click to expand...

_________________________________________________

http://www.pandora.com/stations/4f53c7d43c47d80bf291fac33bf40bfb8431ac386469d6d1
Click to expand...
Thanks ! How'd you do that ?
 
I just went to Pandora's search site - http://www.pandora.com/backstage - and entered "Big Radio" and your site popped up. You have to put quotation marks around "Big Radio" to limit the search to those specific words. Otherwise you'll get hundreds of sites with the words "Big" and/or "Radio."
 
copydesk2 said:
I just went to Pandora's search site - http://www.pandora.com/backstage - and entered "Big Radio" and your site popped up. You have to put quotation marks around "Big Radio" to limit the search to those specific words. Otherwise you'll get hundreds of sites with the words "Big" and/or "Radio."
Click to expand...
Thanks ! So anyone that wants to can listen...& are welcome to....
 
Kent said:
I generally prefer Slacker and Last.fm to Pandora. I must, however, admit that I love Pandora when taking long trips. It seems to handle network changes (from 3G to Edge and back) and drop-outs better than most of the other internet radio services. I can listen from my workplace in central Missouri to Springfield, MO, a trip I take at least once-a-month, and never lose Pandora. Slacker and iHeartRadio will drop as soon as I go from 3G to Edge. Yahoo! and AccuRadio will work most, if not all, of the way but tend to have a lot of delays and chopped songs.
Click to expand...
What does it require to listen to Pandora in the car ? I usaully listen to KSKY, WBAP or KERA. Some good music to mix in with that would be nice.
 
dfaulkner said:
What does it require to listen to Pandora in the car ? I usaully listen to KSKY, WBAP or KERA. Some good music to mix in with that would be nice.
Click to expand...

If you have a smartphone, just go to your device's app store, and there's almost guaranteed to be a Pandora widget (the only one I'm not sure about is WinMo). Download it. From there, all you need is either an auxiliary connector for your radio (if your car radio has an auxiliary input) or a low power FM transmitter. I use the iTrip for my iPhone, which will let me transmit on any FM frequency, and it runs about $40 at Target and Best Buy. There are other good devices similar to the iTrip. Just be aware that you'll need an unlimited data plan, or you'll rack up a humongous bill!

If you don't have a smartphone, you probably won't have that option, though I understand there are IP radios available in newer model and luxury cars.
 
Thank you all for your ideas & suggestions. I'm starting to see the limits of Pandora. A computer doesn't remember what Easy Listening radio sounded like. (Probably most of the people working there don't either.) In my mind it should be heavy on instrumentals with about 4 - 6 vocals per hour. Not sure how to tell Pandora that. Or that some songs fit the Easy Listening format because of "who" sings them & that that doesn't translate into every song with a piano = Easy Listening, etc.
 
Another site that has some good stations on it is live365.com
It's different in that people have uploaded or are streaming songs to the site for rebroadcast to the masses.
I don't know how it does on a smartphone. I listen at work on the computer.
 
I can tell you the Live 365 widget for the iPhone is pretty worthless. It only allows you to stream a few (as in less than 10) stations if you don't pay for the service. You can (or at least used to be able to), however, get around that limitation with fStream and, probably, Wunderradio. I haven't tried listening to a Live 365 stream on my iPhone in quite some time, and I think the only one I have programmed into fStream is Star 107.9.

When it comes to the beautiful music format, I know AOL Radio and Yahoo! Radio offer it. What I don't know is if it sounds like the old KMEZ or Escape on Sirius/XM. I'm not really into the beautiful music format and have never tried to listen to any of the online services' formats.

Finally, one last thing to keep in mind is that just because there's an app for your smartphone doesn't mean it will work on your specific device. There are many different types of BlackBerry and Android, and some versions don't work with some apps. It can get very confusing. A friend of mine has both a BlackBerry and an Android, and he'd kill to have the streaming options I have with my iPhone. He's mentioned that the CBS, AOL and Yahoo! radio widgets for the BlackBerry don't work at all on his phone as they weren't designed for his specific model, and his Android doesn't seem to stream much of anything very well, though I have several other friends with different Android phones who'd beg to differ with his assessment.
 
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