pandora

I’ve heard rumor that pandora isn’t looking too hot from a business standpoint. Heard that the model is one to make you broke. I’ve commented before on their commercial aspirations and revenue. I may even be partially to blame for some of the turmoil. If not for a few nagging bloggers would the commercials have survived? I suppose they may have - people may have acquiesced to the ads and taken them for granted.

But if ad revenue were enough I don’t think pandora would be in as much of a pinch. Pandora has done some of the more clever (and actually engaging) web advertising I’ve seen.

I think the real problem lies with the one thing pandora has never offered: on-demand music. Pandora can’t do this right? Wrong. It can’t do it alone. Pandora currently offers links to buy songs you’ve heard on itunes or amazon… But then what? Does pandora still pay to play the song I own? That doesn’t make business sense. Pandora helps you buy a song, then pays to play it. If pandora could integrate with itunes to 1) allow me to play songs i’ve purchased any time I want and 2) cut costs by playing from my hard drive rather than paying to stream songs I own, then they would save money and i’m guessing do a little better job of pushing the ability to buy the songs you hear. Did you know they have links to buy the songs you hear? I’m guessing many don’t know this. The availability of this feature is too hidden. Make it more prominent and give me some incentive (like on demand playback in pandora) and I might just help you make a few more bucks.

That may not solve everything, but it wouldn’t hurt.

Every week I receive an email from iTunes called “New Release Tuesday,” I’m sure many of you receive the same. I nearly never read it, but think it could be valuable with a little tweaking. I don’t read it because it is, for the most part, not relevant to me. The email includes listings of the most popular new releases for the week - the problem is, I don’t listen to most of the bands that make the email and I’ve gotten so used to it being irrelevant that I won’t open it even if it is relevant. So… tweak it. Make it more relevant, and deliver it to me in an RSS feed or any way I chose.

Here’s the idea: let me select a handful of bands, or look at my listening / purchasing history and do it for me, send this info to a database, when the selected bands - or related bands - release an album I receive a notification in my RSS reader or other medium of choice. Amazon does this with purchase history (in email), but I want it more customized and I want to be able to add things that I haven’t purchased. In fact, this would probably work better for a company like Pandora or Last.fm. Pandora could theoretically create a custom RSS feed for me that would notify me when bands I’ve liked - or that the service believes I would like - release new albums.

And it’s not just about new music - this type of system could be built around any type of product. The opportunity is there, it’s just a matter of time.

I consider myself reasonably well connected to information. Yet lately I’ve somehow missed out on a few things I would like to have known about. They happen to be album releases. First was Beck’s: The Information, and now Clap You Hands Say Yeah’s: Some Loud Thunder. I use pandora all the time, and while I haven’t listened to my Beck station in a while, I’ve given enough thumbs up to both Beck and CYHSY that Pandora knows I am a fan. So, why not somehow tell me they have new albums coming out? I’d prefer RSS, but I’ll even let you email me that info with links containing your affiliate codes. Go ahead.. do it, I dare you, and then maybe we won’t have this conversation anymore. [and if you already do this and i just don't know about it, I apologize... but I should know about it.]

But it’s not just music, this idea should apply to all sorts of products. People want to know when new stuff comes out. Especially stuff they’ve told you countless times that they like. The choice is simple, it doesn’t take much to set up this type of feed and I’m fairly certain you’ll be happy with the return (which will also be easy to measure).

Everyone needs to eat, but Pandora has officially upset me with its newest revenue source: pre-roll commercials. I loaded a station on pandora expecting to hear music and instead heard a commercial for McDonald’s Dollar menu. One of Pandora’s big selling points is that it does not have commercials, the more commercials that find their way into the service, the less likely I am to use it. Pandora already makes money off sales of songs that people discover on the site and click through to buy on itunes or amazon. I did this last week, I had an itunes gift card and chose to buy some songs I had bookmarked on Pandora, I used the links on Pandora to make the purchases. That’s one Pandora revenue stream, but they’ve also sold out their site design in the past turning it into an ad. Now they need another revenue stream? I understand that this is guaranteed revenue compared to the click-throughs which I’m sure most users rarely use, but this goes completely against what the service is supposed to be about. So, should I switch back to last.fm?

Update: Because I love when companies do this, I’d like to point out that Tom, Pandora’s CTO, has left a comment on this post.

Maybe it’s because Lopico has been getting a large number of visitors from Japan lately, or maybe it’s because I just really like this band. Anyway, I just felt like posting something from one of my new favorite bands - which I of course found on Pandora. This is Asian Kung-Fu Generation and the song is called Loop & Loop.

Now back to the usual dorkery…

I written about pandora a handful of times, and it is one of my favorite sites.  One of the few I visit every day without exception. It’s also the first site that I’ve noticed that provides a feed for its job postings.  Aggregators are fine, but the only way to know that you won’t miss a posting from a certain company is an rss feed.  Now if only I could narrow my feed by job function.

Related:  R-S-S me a J-O-B

Back to the rewrite (Why can’t all browsers get along?)