Personalized radio service Pandora has taken the plunge and released an AIR application into beta that allows users to play music from Pandora without opening the browser.
When I first heard of this development, I thought it was such a cool idea. Music playback is one of those things that really doesn’t need a full browser experience; just give me a simple control panel to enter songs, play and pause, and fast forward.
Unfortunately, the AIR version of Pandora doesn’t do much to actually improve the user experience. See that screenshot above? You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a screenshot of the regular Pandora homepage. It’s actually a screenshot of the AIR application itself.
Why does it look and function pretty much the exact same? Pandora explains that it needs the real estate of a large window to show the advertisements that support its operations.
But the large window pretty much robs the AIR application of all its value. The only additional functionality of any substance is a menu for switching stations that pops up when right clicking on a dock icon. Alas, even this triggers the large window to appear.
If Pandora is going to make this work, it’ll need to find a way around the advertising conundrum. But even if it does, it won’t be the only one. I imagine that lots of web services will have to wrestle with how to provide maximum functionality through AIR without sacrificing too much ad revenue. The problem is only exacerbated with a service like Pandora that’s so simple to operate.
I’ve been using OpenPandora which basically just uses the flash from pandora and adds some functionality. It integrates with messengers to display what you’re listening to, automatically uploads to last.fm every time you listen to a song, it has notification popups everytime a new song plays with album art/song title/artist…It’s great.
Pandora is great and for people with illness. It is because music is a therapy and relaxant. Just pick the right kind of music to set your mood.
It’s a shame that it uses a ridiculous amount of CPU resources. ~50% cpu usage on my MacBook Air. no thanks.
50% of your CPU? i don’t know what kind of a processor you have in that MacBook of yours, but it only uses 2-3% of the CPU on my HP laptop running Vista. Maybe there’s some other issue there.
While I’m a big fan of AIR and all-in-all feel that AIR is a game changer this is indeed a bit of a let-down. Migrating the entire version of your actual site as a desktop application, is more of a step backwards than anything else. Not only do I have the same web experience, but I have to install it, and have product updates. Will be curious to see if last.fm moves towards AIR at all, in contrast the finetune AIR application is a reasonable AIR application.
Just make the window smaller Mike. And, in terms of advantages – the AIR app will keep running when IE/Safari/Opera/Firefox crash.
Clearly a step backwards. Just say no to software.
By the way: Does AIR support mobile devices?
Hmm I ahven’t sen the app so can’t say . in any case its a first iteration so there is a scope of improvement if there are some rough edges .but what surprise me is that you scoff at the idea of Pandora Making money aby showing advertisement and taking your desktop real state in the process ?
Your review sounds like Pandora is OK serivce but doesen’t worth the pain to sit thru the desktop Add and APP. this is very shortsighted of you.
this is one of the site which is doing some super innovative work in Music discovery , all this while fighting with the likes of RIAA .and you armchair revolutionary sit down and pass judgment as if its a run of the mill web venture .
Ever thought of spending some time on Music Genome Project [Pandora is based on it ] , to understnad the great work they are doing . Sorry for being blunt but you are clueless about what Pandora represent .
How many Banner add do you show on TC ?? ever cared for user exp and time it takes to load TC Homepage . As someone who is unable to access the service [I am from India] i can say from my previous experience that for service like Pandora I won’t mind few pop up advertisement and banner .
and incase you don’t know . your Boss MA has said on record that Pandora is his Fave site and he use it all the time . I wonder what he has to say about it .
@Paul Stamatiou I think we’re working with the Pandora guys to get the CPU usage down. It’s partly an AIR on Mac thing that we’re working on.
@Lars It doesn’t run on mobile yet, but we’re working on it. Being able to create native cross-platform/device applications is a big part of the strategy.
=Ryan
rstewart@adobe.com
I’ll stick to openpandora…but yeah this stuff is very resource intensive:
openpandora 430,812K
The advertising conundrum? Pandora has this easier than almost anyone else.
The conundrum is why they can’t figure out to sell audio ads on a radio station.
@11 because if they do people will just go to one of the other services.
I admit to being unfamiliar with the competitive landscape -
but: Browser open, visual ads. Browser closed, audio ads?
It’ll be interesting to see what developers do with the AIR platform that doesn’t wildly irritate users with regards to advertising.
I could see Pandora gently flashing a pop-up/always on top ad, over the system tray or something of that nature. Or giving the user the option of that or an interstitial audio ad. You know, like real radio but with instant feedback and better tracking.
Or offering a hybrid—a subscription option that clears ads (except the Amazon affiliate element) or a free version with audio ads. I can see those working out well if they’re short. But you could technically go so far as to offer users a say in how they want their ads delivered—longer and less often or shorter and more often.
Just think: ads that end in “click the ad album cover for your free offer.” I’m not a fan of rampant advertising, but that’s the price of free and Pandora is a pretty incredible service. It’s basically where I find all my new music now. (Which I then promptly download from Rhapsody.)
Congrats to Pandora and Adobe for taking first steps.
so, is it working outside US through this app? anyone knows?
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I truely hope this is a beta because their isn’t any reason why it should look like that. Their excuse is a poor one.
There are a few companies that work on user interfaces and business identity management. i think they would do themselves a very big service to look into hiring one.
I like The Skins Factory
http://www.theskinsfactory.com
They have worked with plenty of people including Microsoft, Alienware and the NFL.
air crashes my flash which crashes my ability to watch video in firefox… i won’t use it
I personally use PandoraBoy, though PandoraMan and PandoraJam all have had their uses over time:
http://osx.iuse.../app/pandoraboy
http://osx.iuse.../app/pandoraman
http://osx.iuse.../app/pandorajam
Much better integration on the OSX side, offering song recording (illegal), scrobbling to Last.fm, keyboard shortcuts and Apple Remote support…
@PhilWil — yes this is very much a beta. In fact it’s really just a release from the “lab” to gauge interest in a Pandora desktop app and get feedback on this particular approach. The details are here:
http://blog.pan...the_lab_pa.html
@Chris, @Peer — we’re certainly working on advertising that doesn’t take away fromt he listening experience or aggravate. That’s difficult on the web and even harder on the desktop. We’ll sort it out, but that’s part of what we’re tinkering with as we experiment with this sort of thing.
@paul — CPU usage on the Mac is a huge problem right now. We’re working with Adobe on finding a solution. Agree that it’s not cutting it right now on the Mac.
Thanks for your feedback here… we’ll keep watching as it comes in here and you’re all invited to share any additional thoughts with beta-feedback@pandora.com.
Tom
CTO @ Pandora
I downloaded the Pandora AIR app, it’s running right now on my laptop. It uses 2% of CPU, which doesn’t seem like a big problem. When I minimize the app, it just leaves a little icon in the tray, also no big deal. I am not seeing the need for all the complaining. However, I do pay the annual subscription fee to Pandora so that I can get it through my Sonos at home, so maybe I am getting a different (no ad) view? Do other people keep it maximized while it plays? If not, why is the skin such a big deal? I pick a station, minimize it, and let it play.
Pandora is wonderful, Tom and the company have done an awesome job with it. The combo of Pandora and Sonos has changed the way we listen to music at home.
Clicking a green-thumb-up on songs I like is a good idea. However, Pandora limits the number of times I can click on the red-thumb-down — after which they force me to listen to entire songs that I dislike. This is sort of like having to fully “read” every spam that appears in my in-box. So even if I could stand building my own channel, I could never listen to it, without hearing all the unwanted songs that they force on me. Last time I checked, I can’t pay my way of their song-spam either — read their pay-TOS or Google it.
Another problem with Pandora is, it stops playing without regular interaction. I’d like to minimize it as background music, or sleep by it, without constantly having to click something. I’m willing to pay, but Pandora drove me away.
From whose perspective is this a bad design?
- As a user I want a consistent experience across web, desktop, and mobile and have the expectation that those 3 options will be available to me.
- A product team wants to offer a consistent marketing story and has constraints on funding and time to meet user demand. Being able to offer a reusable platform across web, desktop, and mobile is an ideal.
- If an application platform whether it be from Adobe, Microsoft, open source, etc can offer a code once deploy anywhere scenario it is a success.
- Dominant music services should be taking note of this design. There are a lot of heavy desktop client applications attempting to figure out how to rewrite a web strategy.
I’m a full believer Pandora will not sell out any time soon. They are trying to create the most passive and enjoyable user listening experience. Whether the AIR is a hit right now does not matter…they’ll make the necessary tweaks. To whoever metioned adding ads between songs: that would be terrible. that’s one of main separating factors from terrestrial radio.
Not sure about this app but Pandora gets my love! I have discovered so much of the kind of music that I live with it.
@23 Chuck: the “skip limit” is required to keep online audio streamers (like both Pandora and my company) in compliance with the DMCA and our contracts with the major labels. There’s nothing web streamers can do about that, short of charging you a sizable money to put you in a different tier of service.
@27 gresh, I can listen to dozens of 20 second “sound bites” in succession at Amazon (and other resellers), with no DMCA impact. And I usually make up my mind within 5-10 seconds if I don’t want the song. So I don’t understand why I’m forced to listen to entire songs that I detest at Pandora — even if I’m a payer.
I’d be happy to listen to independents, and do without the “major” labels, as long as I didn’t have Pandora forcing their dubious suggestions on my ears.
And I’d happily entertain all paid offerings Pandora has, but there was only one last I checked, and it makes it quite clear that there’s a “skip limit” — which is a nice way of saying they’re going to push whatever they want at me, whether I’m a payer or not.
One overlooked issue is, their suggested songs do not match my taste. I really doubt the DMCA has anything to do with it — my guess is that it’s their marketing people inflicting themselves onto their customers. I’m looking for alternatives to Pandora, “currently” they’re unacceptable.
I think the objective is to get on the desktop for the non-US market
An AIR application for Pandora? I thought that’s what Safari was for?
Would somebody please create a “free” social network, where any user can create their own radio station, and/or subscribe to the stations of any other user. Where all the songs are all a) free of cost, b) free of the DCMA, c) free mp3’s, d) free of the spam-like multi-multi pop-up tactics of Live365.com, e) free of spam-like song-forcing and mandatory clicking tactics of Pandora.com, f) free of traditional spam-like radio/tv tactics of blasting some content louder than others. I want many “free” stations to pick from, with legitimate music, with attribution to the artists, I don’t care if it’s from major artists, I want to minimize on my screen and play it all day, and all night while I sleep. Without ever being annoyed by anything.
The FoxyTunes extension for Firefox lets you control most popular music apps, including Pandora, from the status bar at the bottom of the browser. It still requires that Pandora be open in the browser, so it’s not crash-proof, but it does save you the step of leaving whatever page you’re on if you want to skip a song, get lyrics, etc.
FoxyTunes is supported in FF3.
https://addons....refox/addon/219
Have you tried Live365’s desktop application? It has a totally different UI than its Web site. It offers multiple skins, presets, tracks info…like a real standalone media player does. Go to http://www.live365.com/desktop
I don’t see a problem with the AIR app matching the browser UI. The real benefit here (to me) is that pandora will stay running even if my browser crashes — which happens every couple days on my lovely Vista machine (both IE 7 and latest Firefox)
For me the ability to access it outside the browser is a big plus, and the existing UI is flashy enough (no pun intended)
I think Pandora have really got this wrong. Not only could I not review it for my Adobe AIR showcase site, http://freshAIRapps.com because I’m outside of the US, the feedback I have heard is it’s just the web in an AIR runtime.
This is not what AIR was designed for, yes you can do it but they should have really looked into what others are doing and produced a real winner.
freshAIRapps.com
I love the functionality and flexibility provided by a Pandora App, but unfortunately the CPU demands make this solution unusable. Running Pandora through AIR pings my Quad Core Mac Pro to 150% to 180% CPU usage and it just hovers there.
as noted by many others, the cpu usage of this thing is completely absurd. that this actually got through QA and released to the public makes me wonder if Pandora has much a vision for where they’re going……uninstalling now…..