Pandora
- Last build:
- Language:
- Feed URL:
- http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/index.rdf
RSS FEED IDEMS: Pandora
- Princeton Town Hall tonight!
I'll be in Princeton tonight to meet Pandora listeners and music lovers at the Garden Theatre (close to the Princeton campus). Looking forward to hearing what your thoughts are about the service and current trends in digital music. If you're in the area, please stop by! Full details are below.
Details
When: Thursday, February 8th at 7:00 PM
Where: Princeton Garden Theatre, 160 Nassau Street (map and directions)Hope to see you there!
Tim (Founder)
- New! Podcast #5: Elements of Salsa
Fresh off the press, and hot from the oven, Episode #5 of the Pandora Podcast Series is ready for you to hear and download. Get ready to dance, y'all. Watch your toes.
This time, we tear into salsa. Pandora music analyst and salsa bandleader Marina Garza brings in the percussionist, pianist, and bassist from her band, Orquesta D'Soul, and they pick apart the classic rhythmic patterns that link together like puzzle pieces to build salsa grooves. They play examples of the older Cuban styles that gave birth to this music -- son and cha -- and show how mambo and salsa beats revolve around the clave.
Check it out here.
Marina and I will be fielding questions and comments on the podcast page, and we look forward to hearing what you have to say. Enjoy!
Kevin - New York City Get-together tonight!
Tonight, I'll be in NYC to meet Pandora listeners and music lovers at the Cinema Village. Looking forward to hearing what your thoughts are about the service and current trends in digital music. If you're in the area, please stop by! Full details are below.
Details
When: Wednesday, February 7th at 7:00 pm
Where: Cinema Village, 22 East 12th St between University Place and 5th Ave, NYC (map)Hope to see you there!
Tim (Founder)
- Play Listen Repeat Vol. 5
Hey again, folks! Another week, time for another play listen repeat...I'm in the studio for two weeks, making a new record. Since there have been tangential references to production and studio issues in some comments to the other play listen repeat posts, I'm curious to know where people are on these questions:
Do you like big production? Do you notice how something is recorded or is the music more of an overall experience that either works or doesn't? Why are some things that are highly produced interesting and stimulating, and others just seem bloated and self-indulgent?
cheers,
mzps. What a great set of comments from last week's post! Thanks to everyone who posted.
- Portland, ME Get-together this Thursday!
This Tuesday, I'll be in Portland, Maine to meet Pandora listeners and music lovers at the Space Gallery. Looking forward to hearing what your thoughts are about the service and current trends in digital music. If you're in the area, please stop by! Full details are below.
Details
When: Tuesday, February 6th at 7:30 pm
Where: Space Gallery, 538 Congress St, Portland, ME (map)Hope to see you there!
Tim (Founder)
- Play Listen Repeat Vol. 4
Some good friends and I get together every few weeks to hang out, listen to songs and to talk about how we think they work. This past week we talked about several pairs of songs that sound similar but are still very different in mood or meaning. One of the examples was Good Old Desk by Harry Nilsson vs. Hummingbird by Wilco).
vs. 
After a while, the discussion about individual songs expanded into a general aesthetics nerd-off, and after reading up on the subject a bit (online - no book recommendations yet), I find myself wondering how you listeners evaluate the music you like.
What are the characteristics you look for in songs and artists? How many different ways can a song work for you? Do you distinguish between so-called "guilty pleasures" and music that is somehow "great"? If so, is the distinction a matter of taste, or a result of some kind of systematic philosophy?
Do tell...
best,
mzps - Wow, many new books for me to read now. Thanks to everyone for posting, even if it makes my bookshelf collapse.... I'm going to keep posting to that entry as I find more good music books, and I encourage everyone to do the same, if inspired.
- Phoenix, AZ recap
FInally time to catch up on the cross country swing from before the holidays - AZ, CO, DC. Kicked it off with a lovely visit to the Arizona desert. Balmy weather.
I started the day with fun visit to the Cahill Senior Center to meet with some older listeners. Was hit with caustic glances when I suggested we try a Tommy Dorsey station to start... they wanted some 'rock stuff', like Coldplay, U2 etc. and "some country". "classic country?" I asked... "no, you fool, Leanne Rimes and Keith Urban.." Talk about stereotyping... guilty. Very fun to see how easy Pandora was for folks who aren't all about technology. They talked about sharing it with their grandkids. Love it! Thanks to Diana for being such a gracious host.
Then drove over the Thunderbird - the big local business school for a chat with some energetic entrepreneurs. Lots of questions about the business model, not surprisingly...
- UC Berkeley Recap..
Another much belated recap... gradually catching up. Great to finally host a town hall meeting in what is truly our own backyard... Berkeley, CA. Not suprisingly, the group was full of ideas and irreverence.
A number of great discussions, including a lot of talk about integrating with existing collections...
- Pandora Podcast #4: Recording Vocals
The fourth show of our podcast series just went up! We return to the human voice for this one, and check out what singers and producers can do to record the most expressive vocal tracks.
We talk about people who sang quietly and close to the microphone (Marvin Gaye) as well as people who let the sounds of their breath help color their performances (Elliott Smith). This show also goes into mic technique, and plosives, and backing vocal blend. It's much fun. The special guest for this episode is Ariah Firefly, a soul singer and songwriter. Ariah is originally from Brooklyn, but now lives in L.A.
Subscribing to the podcast is easy, and it's the best way to get the new episodes loading onto your machine automatically. On the podcast page, there are links to help you set up your free subscription. Enjoy!
Kevin
- Salt Lake City Recap
Terrific visit to SLC. Arrived in the middle of the night. Quite a shock to board a plane early evening in CA and get off at midnight in Utah. Pretty sizeable temperature swing.
Started the next morning with an interview on the local NPR affiliate, KCPW. Thanks to Lara Jones for having us on her show and for the subsequent (podcast)... Local radio has such a great vibe to me...
- Play Listen Repeat Vol. 3
Hello again everyone,Thanks for all the great responses last week. It's nice to have such a vibrant, participatory group!
On my desk right now, I have a bunch of books, including "Can't Stop Won't Stop" by Jeff Chang, "Sound of the Beast - The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal" by Ian Christe, and "The Latin Beat" by Ed Morales. I have a very large stack of music books both here and at home, and I'm constantly nibbling away at them to find more great music for Pandora.
I thought it would be interesting to ask you folks what your favorite music books are. Do tell!
Meanwhile, to get things started, here are a few of mine:
Emotion and Meaning in Music by Leonard Meyer
Words and Music by Paul Morley
- Pandora Audio Ads: What do you think?
Earlier this month we ran an audio ad test. Since we've had a significant amount of communication with our listeners about it, we thought it would be a good idea to share what we've heard, shed some light on our own thinking behind it, and invite additional dialogue on this topic.
The Ad
For 9 days in early January, a small fraction of our listeners heard a 9-second audio advertisement for McDonald's. It was a woman's voice, reading this text:
"This Pandora station is brought to you by McDonald's dollar menu. From double cheeseburgers to hot fudge sundaes eight ways to eat like a champ for just one dollar"
The ad played the first time listeners changed stations during their visit. Each listener heard the ad only once per day.
Before this test, all of the ads on Pandora had been graphical. We run ads to cover the costs associated with Pandora and while we offer a "no ads" version through a $36 yearly subscription, the vast majority of our listeners choose the ad-supported free service.
The McDonald's ad was a test to gauge reactions to audio advertising on Pandora. We modeled the ad after those that appear on National Public Radio (NPR), which many consider less intrusive than traditional radio ads. This sort of audio ad could provide a way to reach listeners that have Pandora on "in the background" and it could also point a way to ad-supported Pandora services that can't accommodate graphical ads -- for example, a miniature desktop player, or a browser toolbar player.
Reactions
The audio ad was played for more than a hundred thousand listeners and we received approximately 100 written complaints. The reactions ran the gamut from muted concern to strong condemnation. We also heard from a number of listeners who wrote to compliment us on the understated nature of the ad or to congratulate us on finding a new source of revenue.
Other listeners left comments on our blog, or contributed to posts discussing the ad on other blogs. The reactions in these other forums also expressed a variety of perspectives on the issue. Generally though there was fear that Pandora could become overwhelmed with intrusive audio advertising.
The reaction in all of these forums has helped us understand the dimensions that matter to our listeners.
What's Next
We've taken down the McDonalds ad and we're still digesting our listener's feedback. It's likely the case that we'll run other tests before we can conclusively close the books on the question of audio ads on Pandora.
We really value that our listeners and our advertisers are part of a constructive dialogue about how we best support the site with advertising. Thanks to all of you that participated in this conversation.
We'll do a better job next time of describing our plans here on the blog in advance of any additional tests. Stay tuned and don't be shy about weighing in on the issue here or via pandora-support@pandora.com. As always, we love to hear your thoughts on all-things-Pandora.
- Salt Lake City Get-together this Thursday!
This Thursday, I'll be in Salt Lake City to meet Pandora listeners and music lovers at the downtown Main Library. Looking forward to hearing what your thoughts are about the service and current trends in digital music. If you're in the area, please stop by! Full details are below.
Details
When: Thursday, January 18th at 7:30 pm
Where: Salt Lake City Main Library, Auditorium
210 East 400 South (map)Hope to see you there!
Tim (Founder)
- Play Listen Repeat Vol. 2
From what I can tell, there are two main types of Pandora listeners: the "I have a single station that contains everything I like" listeners, and the "I have separate stations for each artist, mood, flavor, and occasion" listeners.Personally, I tend much more towards the latter (especially since I can mix all my stations with the Quick Mix button if I want to). But I can be an adventurous fellow, and so I'm curious to know what your station-creation strategies, habits, superstitions, and obsessions are. Who knows, maybe I'll change my stripes?
In that spirit, this week's Play Listen Repeat asks: how do you make your stations? Got any tips for other listeners? Have you developed a station-creation system that you'd like to share?
I'm very curious.
yours,
mzps - the response to last week's post was amazing. Just for kicks, I made a mega-station from every single artist seed anyone put in last week. Not to get sentimental, but it's our very first station! If you're feeling brave, check it out here.
pps - bonus points for anyone who can think of good names for the two main types of station creators. My names: bears and squirrels.
- Pandora Podcast #3: Electric Guitar Effects
As of today, the newest podcast is ready for you to download (free), listen to on our page (free), or add to your iPod or other portable audio device (also free). Easy to access, and fun for all.
The new one is our third show, and it's all about electric guitar and the different effects that a guitarist can use. We talk about Jimi Hendrix's distortion and his 'talking guitar' tricks, the strummy delay used on U2 records, the rhythms played on the wah-wah pedal in funk, and the types of chorus pedals used by the Cure, the Smiths and the Police. Our guest this time is Patrick Greene, a jazz and funk guitarist originally from St. Louis, MO.
If you enjoy hearing the guitar, this podcast is for you. Oh, and Happy New Year, too.
Kevin
