Pandora claims it will bury radio. Truth is, Pandora will be buried.

Pandora says "we enable each of our listeners to create up to 100 personalized stations"

The truth is, they are not stations. They are playlists arrived at by picking one song.

Pandora is ripe to be buried. It works on a very basic premise - Pick a song and from that a playlist will be derived. This is the not rocket science. Easy to become the leader by developing a simple computer program that determines a playlist based on several songs from among various genres.
Another problem with pandora is that it is a simply a glorified mp3 player aka ipod. Problem is, the people that are marketing pandora don't seem to have a clue what radio is.
It's not about just playing music. There are thousands of "internet radio stations" that play music from the basements of 12 year old boys and their is a genre to suit everyone.
That's what pandora is. That's not radio. Anyone that would buy into their ipo would do just as well to invest in little Johnny's "radio station".

For the most part you hit the nail on the head. Pandora is trying to win the hearts and minds of potential shareholders through hype, not substance. They're good at playing the 'ignore the man behind the curtain' strategy, used by start-ups in the early 2000s.

I see that you guys have a good pep-rally going so far.

Don't get too wrapped up in wishful thinking. Over the weekend the story broke that Borders Book Stores will be re-organizaing and possibly filing for Bankruptcy protection. And in reading through the detail there was this bit of flotsam: They made a major mistake in not developing their own on-line selling mechanism. Instead, they farmed it out to Amazon. (Later they took it back in house, but maybe too late.)

I viewed an interview on C-SPAN recently and one of the participants was talking about "adaptive analytics" or something like that used by Google and others and the suggestion was that the financial regulators should have been using this technique to monitor the banks and Wall Street. They would have seen the financial troubles of the last three years coming far enough in advance to attempt corrective actions.

Pandora may or may not have the "intellectual talent" on board to pull this project off, but I would suggest that people owning and operating radio stations need to be thinking how such technology might be harnessed at their level. Pandora or Google or Apple or e-Bay or someone perfect this concept one of these days. And it will be more significant than an i-Pod Playlist based on one original song selection.

P.S. I recently made my first purchase via Amazon. Boy do they have MY number.... their analytical device now contacts me regularly with suggestions and offers. I think they must have my phone tapped or something. ;D

Under-estimate them at your own peril.

Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:

I would suggest that people owning and operating radio stations need to be thinking how such technology might be harnessed at their level.

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They have. CBS has last.fm, and there's Jelli http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelli, which uses genome-type systems to come up with playlists that reflect interests of their listeners. There will be more. Pandora is the flavor of the month, operating with very limited competition. The music industry has prevented Spotify from operating in this country. People who've tried it say it's better than Pandora or Slacker.

Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:

P.S. I recently made my first purchase via Amazon. Boy do they have MY number.... their analytical device now contacts me regularly with suggestions and offers. I think they must have my phone tapped or something. ;D

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You can adjust your subscription preferences so they don't contact you any more.

Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:

Under-estimate them at your own peril.

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I will....I will.

I tried Pandora about one year ago. The experiment lasted part of one day. The problem is simply that it is almost impossible to satisfy MY particular music tastes by sampling. For instance, I like certain Doo Wop songs but not very many. Selecting one or two brought me a bunch of the genre which was irritating. Same goes for Classic Rock, and girl bands, and disco. I like a little bit of a lot of genre's but I don't like all of any of them. Pandora doesn't work for me.

TheBigA said:

Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:

I would suggest that people owning and operating radio stations need to be thinking how such technology might be harnessed at their level.

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They have. CBS has last.fm, and there's Jelli http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelli, which uses genome-type systems to come up with playlists that reflect interests of their listeners. There will be more. Pandora is the flavor of the month, operating with very limited competition.

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I am not the torch-bearer for Pandora. They will adapt... or someone else will eat their cheese.

So far this discussion assumes that there is nothing more to radio than music. If music is all I want to hear then I can learn to "trick" Pandora into doing what they claim to do, or I can get warm and cozy with i-Tunes or whatever. If music is all I want then I get an i-Pod and load it down... and find a source for NEW music when I need additions.

Josh kicked this discussion off. Josh operates a station. If music is what makes his station, then even if I live under his tower, I have no choice, no control over his music. If I like HIS choice, I'm good. All I need is a radio. If I DON'T like his music, then I look to Pandora or get my own i-Pod and build my own personal playlist. But I am one of those people that apparently the radio industry does not believe actually exist. When I have audio in my ears, I want an update when something new develops in the Egypt drama. I want to know that the latest blizzard is 8 hours ahead of last night's prediction or is going 200 miles north of prediction and will miss me. I want some information including LOCAL information. In trying to read between the lines on Pandora's IPO and planned expansion, I am dumb enough to assume they may try to enter that arena. I read hints that Google has it's sights set on capturing the ad revenue now going to the broadcast industry. If they are so blooming smart, they may figure out that there are a few more people who crave what I crave and they may figure out a way to capture and deliver the content I want.

When I made the statement people owning stations may want to harness the technology I really had in mind harnessing program content beyond the current music-only diet.

TheBigA said:

You can adjust your subscription preferences so they don't contact you any more.

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I'll keep that in mind. So far they have not become obnoxious with the contacts. For now I am enjoying the education of watching them at work and how they do it.

Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:

I want some information including LOCAL information. In trying to read between the lines on Pandora's IPO and planned expansion, I am dumb enough to assume they may try to enter that arena.

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The reason local radio doesn't do it is because it's expensive. The minute Pandora is owned by stockholders, they'll discover what it's like to meet quarterly figures, and they'll revise their proposed expansion. The best they can do is simply become a platform for user-based information, like Twitter or Facebook.

You said radio stations should be thinking about Pandora-like technology, and my point is they are. I don't know if it'll satisfy your personal needs, because they're aiming it at people who already like what radio does, but want to personalize it more.

Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:

I read hints that Google has it's sights set on capturing the ad revenue now going to the broadcast industry.

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Yep. They tried actually selling radio spots a couple years ago, and lost a lot of money doing it. I don't think they'll be going in that direction again. Everybody wants the local money without having a presence in local community. Say what you will about local stations and their cutbacks, but they will always have a local presence with a building, a tower, and some people. It may not be as many people as they once had, but they still have more local people than Google or Pandora.

My best guess: One of those players, or a new one we haven't heard of yet, will find a way to "McDonalds-ize" the industry. There are lots of entrepreneurial types trying to create local streams and Podcasts. (Some of them are clustering around Jerry Del Colliano for guidance and encouragement. Others are doing it on their own.)

What if I could become the local franchisee with a building and people at the local level coupled with the hamburger meat and buns and logos from McDonalds.... err... make that National Audio Google or somebody.

josh said:

It's not about just playing music. There are thousands of "internet radio stations" that play music from the basements of 12 year old boys and their is a genre to suit everyone.
That's what pandora is. That's not radio. Anyone that would buy into their ipo would do just as well to invest in little Johnny's "radio station".

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Pandora has two important things that Little Johnny's internet station doesn't have: A marketing budget, and exposure. People know what Pandora is; they don't know the hundreds of Little Johnnys out there. Pandora is on smartphones, Blue-Ray players, PCs, and gawd knows what else. It's an established player (if you'll pardon the expression. ;D ).

Will someone knock them off their perch? Probably. Something better will eventually come along. Whether Pandora becomes the McDonalds of the industry (leader), or the Burger Chef (gone), remains to be seen. I don't think going public is a really good idea for them, for reasons stated elsewhere.

Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:

What if I could become the local franchisee with a building and people at the local level coupled with the hamburger meat and buns and logos from McDonalds.... err... make that National Audio Google or somebody.

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There are several franchisers that try to do that. The problem is the franchiser wants the lion's share of the profits from the franchisee.

WiMAX is coming. An IPO will fuel the development they need to get head units into cars. By the time this electronic revolution is over, the genome will have been fine-tuned even more, and the picayune details that users share with Pandora will be easily sold to advertisers as incredibly well-targeted.

At what data rates will the ultimate WiMax operate? If it can't do better than the crappy signals now on the Internet it won't be good for anything but talk.

Anyone who thinks Pandora's formula for picking songs is "simple" has no idea how it even works.

I don't think Pandora is ready to "bury" radio, but they shouldn't be underestimated.

MCMagicCracker said:

the picayune details that users share with Pandora will be easily sold to advertisers as incredibly well-targeted.

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And therein lies the thing that will kill Pandora. Its users don't want spam. Pandora could easily become the next MySpace after this IPO. If the founders cash out and just leave behind the business people, the users will revolt.

MCMagicCracker said:

WiMAX is coming. An IPO will fuel the development they need to get head units into cars. By the time this electronic revolution is over, the genome will have been fine-tuned even more, and the picayune details that users share with Pandora will be easily sold to advertisers as incredibly well-targeted.

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Who besides Sprint is using WiMax? LTE is being used by the other cellphone companies, and Sprint is talking about switching to LTE as well. WiMax is the Beta VCR of wireless. Stick a fork in it.

And it is the cellphone companies that will be offering 4G wireless internet services, probably not your cable company, local gummint, or land-line phone provider unless they also provide cellular services. And you're gonna pay - big-time. I can see the cellphone companies pricing themselves out of their own market if they continue to increase prices and cap data.

Municipal wireless is all but dead. The cable companies won't want to invest in their own set of towers and other infrastructure that will be fought by the NIMBYs anyway (the cellphone towers are already there, and even new cell towers are being fought and denied).

Technical issues aside, the biggest difference between the old media like radio and the new internet media is the nature of the information exchange. The two-way internet is able to extract valuable psychographic information from audiences and participants in a way that one-way broadcast and print media can only dream of. This endlessly and exponentially expandable database of information is the ultimate income stream, and can be monetized and repurposed in countless ways.

The world has decided that the future of media is on the internet, and so it shall be. As Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook have already shown, it is a winner-take-all game with a small number of big players. Being the first to define a new market territory or technology is a crucial factor in becoming one of those big players. Pandora aims to define the internet 'radio' game, whatever it turns out to be. They already have a good start, and will figure out exactly how to play the rest of that game as they go along.

In the unlikely event that the internet collapses or contracts because of some unforseen limitation or catastrophe, then broadcasting might re-emerge as a dominant media form... but not before.

Lee Rust said:

In the unlikely event that the internet collapses or contracts because of some unforseen limitation or catastrophe, then broadcasting might re-emerge as a dominant media form... but not before.

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The primary issue when it comes to Pandora isn't expansion, but royalties. Pandora can't "bury radio" until they cut their Sound Exchange royalty bill. They've talked about having their service redesignated so they can pay a rate closer to other streaming sites. Those rates keep on increasing as their audience grows. Not an encouraging situation. But the music industry wants to see Pandora succeed. So they will help them as much as they can, as long as they keep paying for music.

Lee Rust said:

Technical issues aside, the biggest difference between the old media like radio and the new internet media is the nature of the information exchange. The two-way internet is able to extract valuable psychographic information from audiences and participants in a way that one-way broadcast and print media can only dream of. This endlessly and exponentially expandable database of information is the ultimate income stream, and can be monetized and repurposed in countless ways.

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We are reminded daily of the dangers of putting our personal information in the public domain. Some of it will get there anyway and yes, the Internet is certainly capable of data mining it into some semblance of order. But I doubt the general public is going to fall for specifics and even as we speak laws are being passed to force the opt-out/in option. It may be more information than "old radio" can gather but it is far from a complete picture of your audience. I strongly suspect Sam's Club can offer a much more accurate and timely picture of my personal shopping habits than can any Internet site or source. And if you limit the data mining to music sites you get nothing.

First of all, Wimax is a panacea term that has been tossed around for the past five years..'Just wait till Wimax gets here, radio will be dead.' So far, it's a bogus pipe dream stated by either disgruntled ex-radio people or hobbyists who don't understand consumer habits.

From what my consulting engineer friend says, Wimax is just another wireless standard like my wireless router uses in my home. The problem is lack of spectrum to give free over the air access to the public Internet and why the FCC wants to take away spectrum from TV broadcasters and auction it off to the highest telco bidder. The end-game being..To put more money into the government coffers, not allow you to listen to free streaming in the car.

Of course there may be room for subscription-based music services like Pandora, but the premise that subscription services delivered in a limited-access basis at a cost will replace free over the air commercial and non-commercial radio is completely without merit. Remember the promise of Broadcast.com? Where is that service today?

I don't like Pandora, I just think it's a glorified iPod on shuffle. There's no logic to its rotation of music (it doesn't play the hits more often), there's no audio processing, no station identification, and no DJs. I wish that instead of Pandora existing, Shoutcast would be the dominant Internet radio provider, and it would connect listeners to actual radio stations based on user's music tastes and location. Even if it's just a 15 year old kid spinning tunes, it's at least got a person behind the scenes selecting the music. Or if someone likes indie rock, they'd be exposed to a local college station streaming online, rather than a soulless playlist determined entirely by a computer.