Pandora, Please Don’t Try Too Hard To Be Last.fm
Michael Arrington
23 comments »
I have a special place in my heart for music streaming site Pandora. It was one of the first startups profiled on TechCrunch, back in the summer of 2005.
Pandora creates radio stations for users based on input on the songs they like and don’t like. Over time it learns about what you like and tends to play exactly what you are looking for. But it also plays new music that it thinks you will like - I’ve discovered a few new bands from listening to the service. It is usually playing in the background when I blog. In short, I think Pandora is just about perfect in its current form.
I imagine, though, that Pandora has a long term goal of achieving a liquidity event on par with Last.fm’s $280 million sale to CBS earlier this year. And to do that, they seem to think that they need to be a lot more like that service.
Pandora is releasing a batch of new features tonight under the name “Pandora Extras.” They are saying “listening is just the start” (Frankly, I think it’s just enough). The new features are starting to make the service look more and more like Last.fm. They include:
- make friends with other Pandora users (it’s a social network!)
- recommendations of new artists and songs based on what you are hearing
- points you to other Pandora listeners who have similar tastes
- 100 new “finely tuned genre stations”
Two of the new features are clearly designed to make Pandora more like Last.fm (recommendations based on what others are listening to, and creating a social network). The second bullet above is a way to branch out from a given radio station, and I like it. I’m indifferent to the new pre-made radio stations.
As long as Pandora doesn’t screw up the core listening experience, I’m with them. But if they dilute that experience because they feel they need to follow the current trend of turning everything into a social network, I will be the first to bail on them.
They’ve still never launched my most wanted feature — an “Advanced User Interface” that lets you create a station from music genes.
Do you guys shuffle posts so people aren’t sure what they read last and spend more time on your page? lol
Pandora is the reason i don’t use Last.fm very much. To date they have rolled out a clean user interface that let’s me discover new music in a way that makes sense.
From the screenshots it looks like they’ve left all the good stuff intact while extending their capabilities the way they always do, through tight design and high UI standards.
Let’s see what it can do when it goes live.
if you’re an entrepreneur and ever get to hear tim westergren talk - go listen. He’s got a great story about this journey. Starting Savage Beast and Genome, traveling the VC circuit to a lot of “no no no’s” and a few “maybe’s” but no money, wondering to stay focused on the product or keep hitting the pavement. Anyway whatever he did paid off eventually but it’s still pretty inspiring.
http://ventureblog.com/article....._per_1.php
(old article about it)
Pandora, I like the name!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Amen, Michael. This trend of turning everything into a social network will prove to be a big, useless dud.
On Pandora, it would only be a distraction from the core functionality of the site, which is awesome.
How many social networks can there be? How many can I belong to?
I wish these sites would stop trying to monetize everything in such dreadfully predictable ways, and just concentrate on their core competencies.
november 5th? really? i had to scratch my chin after reading the date on this post. why? any avid user of last.fm will note that’ social networking’ is hardly a genuine attributable term. unless willing to surf through myriads of icon photos, which more than likely bear feature someone/something other than their owners’ likenesses armed with a mere (supposed) age, sex and location + the given individual’s taste in music in tow. besides. this feature HAS EXISTED AT FOR AT LEAST 2 YRS, since november of 2005 or longer, which marks my sign up date with last.fm.
so yeah. i am in fact a 33 year-old fan of pandora’s main competitor. frankly because pandora often hasn’t even heard of the artists i plug into searches (…yup. justed searched for 3 of this weeks’ most listened to artists…nada), whereas last.fm maintains a FAR more extensive viral/wiki based roster which includes many new and talented up and coming or merely lesser known artists which users are free to explore before others have had the chance to boast “i knew them way back when”. i also really enjoy the user-initiated concert listings + numbered statistics. and have discovered new artists by listening to the custom radio stations which have included many of the aforementioned musical rarities which pandora so regretfully seems to have neglected.
it does, however, suck that last.fm has sold out to a bigger corporation, but as a music whore + part time music industry employee, though pandora led the way, pandora has never been as good as last.fm
“How many social networks can there be? How many can I belong to?”
If only the companies adding these features would realize that, Joe T. It’s social network bankruptcy time.
Hi everybody… fun to see that people are interested in what we’re up to. The main idea with this whole extra’s area was to give us a way to present content and features in context with listening. Listening is, and always will be, the heart of Pandora.
We’re a radio station, not a social network, or anything else.
None the less we think there is lots of great stuff that can branch off from listening: you can learn more about the artists and their albums, find other similar music, make purchases, and yes meet other folks that like the bands you like. So, not a social network, but looking for lightweight ways to expand the experience without getting in the way of our core mission: entertain you with music you’ll love. Hope you’ll stop by tomorrow morning for a listen and then drop us a note to let us know what you think.
Tom
CTO @ Pandora
My most desired feature on pandora is classical music. They have claimed that to be coming soon for a long time now.
Agree with everything said, I like Pandora a lot and think they’ve done the best job of any website I’ve seen of turning ads into ‘design’ and actually making them cool to look at while listening and moving through music.
I thought Last.Fm was cool a year ago when I downloaded it and find it completely useless except for the blog widget that says my most recent songs…and even that doesn’t do much for me it just looks cool in a sidebar.
Good luck pandora, look forward to the finely tuned stations, but just so you know I don’t care which other users listen to what I listen to…I’m just there for the music.
nothing can replace an independent dj. i tried pandora more than a year ago. i started the set with tracks from the smashing pumpkins and the brazilian girls. pandora suggested i follow with something like neil sedaka. click! (enough for me!) i’ve had the best luck with radioparadise.com on saturdays.
I’m a loyal scrobbler through and through. I’d rather listen to my own music than the stations that either of the sites create.
Maybe my dear Pandora is feeling the pressure from the big music companies. I remember not that long ago when Pandora was announcing their Apocalyptic End because of it. All of a sudden that went away. I’m sure Big Label wants a chunk of money to leave Pandora alone, so Pandora has to generate some more cash just to stay afloat. What better way of generating cash than becoming a me-too web company, and forget how and who got them where they are.
Keep it real, Pandora! We’re backing you up!
I used to DJ at an eclectic college station where I learned a lot about a man different music forms. I’ve missed that, especially as stations have homogenized of the years (thanks, clear channel) and non-rock, non-top40-classical stations have been eliminated.
Last.fm has been a great tool for me, exposing me to bands I can’t hear about otherwise. I tried a few artists I know and found Pandora didn’t know them (”arvo part”, “rainer bruninghaus”), but Last.fm did. IMHO, anything dependent upon human reviewers — like Pandora’s sound memes, or the original Yahoo’s human categorizing of all net content — simply cannot scale.
I too old to be interested in social networking like facebook or myspace, but I do see the value in Amazon-esque “people who liked this band also liked these bands”. That’s the true power of social networking. I’m looking for music, not friends.
Final selling point for me: SlimDevices (Logitech) Squeezebox can stream my Last.fm station profiles. Very very nice.
someone please explain me why i can access Last.fm in inida whereas Pandora is blocked ?
I couldn’t agree more, pandora is perfect the way it is mainly because its not like last.fm.
My most desired feature on pandora is to be accessible from France ;). So sad you had to cut it down out of U.S. .
I used to think the Web was international, this fee story made me realized how wrong I was.
I quote Quqrk..
Waiting for Pandora “return” in Italy!
And I’m puzzled to hear so much thign have changed.. I’d like just to have the e old Pandora back, it was the best online radio ever..
@10: Classical is on Pandora now! Try creating a station from a classical composer.
I have Pandora’s next killer feature:
To work (without using a proxy server).
It WAS the best. Now, once again, old-guard dinosaurs have had their say.
Hey Pandora CTO, why not just stick your data center in Canada or off-shore?
Pandora in portugal. That’s a killer feature.
Is it possible to use it via proxy?
I personaly like http://pandorafm.real-ity.com/ It lets me listen and logs my music. Which them goes to FaceBook or wherever I want it. This is the way social networking is supposed to work…with little effort on our part.
I need to listen to more music.