Pandora radio - conference notes
Posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 12:08pm. #
At Internet World 2007. Watching Paul Brown, MD Europe, Pandora Media
Taking us on a tour of Pandora. A little boring for me, given that I use it.
Says that his service is all about ‘Discovery’. Irritatingly calls it radio. It’s not. It’s a music jukebox. Grr.
People on average make 25-30 stations, based on artists and/or songs. Interesting: I think I have about five in my Pandora.
Talks about the problem of search-blindness within iTunes, and how this fixes it.
Says that the “Backstage” area - more info about the tracks, seemingly totally lifted from AMG with no additional content and precious little that is unique, is being quite popular. I don’t quite understand how, but anyway, that bodes well.
Says they aren’t focused on community. But they have an interesting new profile system. “Last listened-to”, etc. Looks worth looking into.
Explains how the music genome project works: I heard all this on an old Leo Laporte podcast (Behind the Net, or something) so nothing new for me. Picture of a typical music analyser on the screen who looks like a spotty geeky student. However, interestingly they appear to have tweaked this recently to use collaborative feedback a bit (which I seem to remember Westergren specifically said in the podcast that he wasn’t going to do).
Stresses that Pandora isn’t just “about the hits”. (Probably a main point of difference with Last.fm).
Expresses that they want to be across all platforms: in the car, on the mobile, at home, etc. (That bit’s a little scary: but then, of course they -want- to be on those platforms, but they’ve precious little else to say.)
Nicely, Westergren does a tour of the US visiting listeners. Says he’s doing this to meet the listeners, but I reckon there are other reasons. Not sure yet what those might be.
Figures. Yay.
Registered users: Mar 2007: 6,141,172 (not now 6.5)
Mar 2006: 1,474,032
Launch Nov 05
Briefly mentions expansion plans: Canada, Continental Europe, UK. Mobile: a key area. Classical music is coming too. ‘Further consumer electronics partnerships’.
Helen Blaby said at May 3rd, 2007 at 8:34am 
Nick Reynolds (BBC) said at May 3rd, 2007 at 2:34pm 
