So I’ve signed up for Pandora, and take it for a spin, knowing I’m not a music fan…. I was a teenager in the 1970s – a bit late for the Beatles and Disco was kind of the genre of that period.
So the process starts by asking you to pick an artist you like, so I type in Lee Greenwood. After a few songs, it pushes you to register – not a big deal to tell them my age and that I’m male. It picks a version of “God Bless the USA that I’ve never heard before – one with the USA Army Chorus, that is reallly baaaad”. I click thumbs down, and it says “Sorry, we’ll never play that song again”. Ummm, I like the song, just not that version. Okay, learning curve.
I add in John Denver and Karen Carpenter. Getting the picture yet of why I don’t listen to music? :) Now that it knows my age, the ads shift to wanting to sell me a hairpiece… but more annoying is the music selections switch to music people of my age like to listen to – but that’s the same music that I didn’t want to listen to as a teenager. I’m not a druggie and I was not a left-wing antiwar activist.
Despite having turned down over and over the choice of adding Simon and Garfunkel to my artist list… it starts playing S&G, Bob Dylan, and Jim Croce… after turning “thumbs down” on its choices, Pandora informs me that I can’t do that. I must listen to the songs they choose, because each song costs them money and skipping songs breaks their business model.
I saw no real evidence that it was “learning” from the songs I was turning down. So now I added Bing Crosby and Janus Ian. I’m trying to see if I can make Pandora’s head explode with improbable data. Ooh, Louie Armstrong playing down in New Orleans. Now we’re getting somewhere…. yazza
Well, once I clicked on a song I liked, it is getting much better at picking good songs :)
For those of you who read the book “The Third Wave”, this is exactly what they were talking about – a new type of society where “production” is based on customizing the product to the needs/wants of the consumer, not forcing a standardized product from a factory, and convincing the buyer that your product is the one that they want.
It’s an entirely different way of viewing people, life and personal interaction. Conventional music radio is *doomed*, even without the “performance tax”.
I’ve been reading some “inside” the radio business type stuff, and they think the solution is to browbeat salesman into making more cold calls on clients or just waiting out the recession..
Success and profitability isn’t about the advertising clients, it’s about the listeners.
You can no longer force me to listen to your radio station because you paid the FCC for a license.
Until that message sinks in, radio is going nowhere.
Pandora was one of my mainstays pre-SRG :) I think that there are two keys to making it enjoyable, one: Just let it play in the background while doing other things. Not every song requires a vote, a non vote just indicates that you are neutral and that the direction of the current playlist is tolerable. Giving a thumbs down to “God Bless The USA” just means that song won’t play again. Giving a thumbs down to another Lee Greenwood song means it wont play another song by him.
Two: Create multiple genre “stations” besides your own personal station. I have three other stations to fit whatever my mood may be.
Art: I gave up on Pandora because the more I gave it feedback, the more I got songs I didn’t want to hear. I’m not as clever or creative as you are with the computer stuff (like typing in Bing Crosby and Janis Ian together to see what the Great Computer Brain in the Sky would do) so I just gave up. So many Internet things I’ve tried over the years since I got it (about four years ago) make me feel manipulated in one way or another. I play along for a while, trying to get what I want, but then I just get ticked off and go away. I get the feeling there are alot of 20-something whiz kids structuring these things and they just KNOW they are smarter by ten yards than anybody else out there. Unfortunately for them, this 50-something lady has the gumption to shut down their Web site before they get what they want from me (a purchase of something or other.) The Internet (especially for-profit sites) need me MUCH more than I need them. I can shut everything down and walk away to do something else — take a bath, read a book, listen to a CD on the stereo, watch an old movie on TCM. The only thing I don’t walk away from is SRG. You don’t manipulate your visitors; you give us what we want in a format that makes sense and doesn’t eat up a bunch of time to get to the radio shows we’re interested in listening to.
One more thing: I never buy anything from Web sites that make you order with a charge card over the Net. I only SHOP using the Web sites then I BUY calling an 800 number and talking to a real person. I don’t know why I think it’s relevant to add this to my above comments but I do.
Hope you’re well, Art. Read your stuff on the blog and chat listings regularly.
For some reason, Pandora took an ugly turn along the lines that you mentioned. It started playing “New Age” instrumental stuff. My working theory is they have some music that carries little or no royalties (who would want to listen to it?), so after luring me in with $.10 of music and seeing I didn’t click on any ads, I’m now in the deadbeat file.
Exactly. THeir system would “drift off” into types of music or artists I didn’t want. That’s why I stopped going to the Web site and went back to playing CDs on the stereo. It was a waste of time to deal with them.
Forget Pandora…switch to Grooveshark! http://listen.grooveshark.com/#
They have just about every piece of music that I have searched for — with NO ads and, unlike Pandora, you can select/deselect whatever you like.
Grooveshark also lets you create “playlists” — which can be anything you wish- an entire album by a single artist, a mix of music to set a mood, the greatest hits of your teens, or whatever you wish.