You’d be hard pressed to find someone who tries the online streaming radio service Pandora that doesn’t like it. In fact, some users like it so much that they actually ask for ways to pay the company, to make sure it stays alive (something that has been a question mark given the oppressive Internet radio licensing costs). And while there has been a limited subscription version for some time, Pandora has never proactively promoted it. But starting tomorrow it’s taking the freemium model seriously, with the launch of Pandora One.
The most obvious feature of Pandora One is the removal of ads from the site (this was the only feature of the previous subscription version) — that means not only the ads on the page but the in-stream audio ads as well. And there are five other keys to Pandora One that you get with your $36-a-year subscription price: The biggest one is access to a very solid Pandora desktop app. The others include high quality streaming, a personalized look, a mini player and extended player timeouts.
All of those should be fairly straightforward, but just to hit on some of the key points:
With its new desktop app, you no longer have to keep Pandora open in a web browser to enjoy it. And you can still do all the same voting/bookmarking/skipping that you do on the site from within the app. You also have access to all of your stations and can create new ones. The app is built on Adobe’s AIR platform, so it will work on either a Mac or a PC. Note: Pandora did try to release an AIR app once before, but it was basically just the Pandora web version ported to AIR — complete with ads. We didn’t like it too much, and neither did Pandora, which killed it. This new one is a lot like the iPhone app, which is to say, awesome.- Pandora One will enable streaming of music over the web at 192Kbps — that’s by far the best quality you’ll find when it comes to streaming music on the web, Pandora CTO Tom Conrad tells me. For some perspective, that’s higher quality sound than iTunes used to sell its music at, until recently when it upgraded all its tracks to the iTunes Plus format. And if the 192Kbps stream is proving too much for your Internet connection, you can always take it back to regular quality.
- With no more ads, Pandora’s background would look pretty barren. That’s where the personalized look features come into play. Basically, you can select from a handful of different nicely designed backgrounds ranging from feminine to masculine.
- Extended player timeouts means that you can leave music streaming on your computer for up to five hours now without worrying about Pandora cutting off your stream. With the free version, Pandora would stop music after an hour of inactivity — they did this because it obviously costs them money to stream the music and sometimes people leave their computers with the site still open. But this longer time out is great if you actually plan to leave the site open while you’re doing something else.
The ad model is of course what keeps Pandora alive. And it’s actually doing very well. Pandora is coming off of its biggest ad sales quarter in the history of the company, Conrad tells me. Ad sales were up 80% over the year ago period and the company is tracking to make $40 million in revenue for the year — which would double last year’s total. More importantly, it means that 2010 could be the first profitable year for Pandora, according to Conrad.
Of course, that doesn’t matter if the lingering online streaming radio royalty issue isn’t resolved, but that could be coming shortly as well. “We’re optimistic about the prospects of a resolution in relatively short order,” Conrad tells me.
So things are looking up and up for Pandora, but at the same time, the company, which has always focused on being a sustainable business (unlike some of the other music startups out there), feels the time is right to branch out a bit. It’s affiliate sales model (which lets users of Pandora buy music through iTunes or Amazon), is already proving to be a nice little secondary model — one that is growing thanks to the iPhone. But it’s the freemium model that could really be a more significant source of money.
The reason is that while the company knows that it will always be just a very small percentage of its user base that will pay for the service, that small percentage is actually a lot of people given Pandora current usage numbers. Right now, Pandora is seeing 10 million monthly users on its website, and it has 5 million members using the iPhone app and another million now using the BlackBerry app (it’s the leading music app on both platforms). If just 3 to 5 percent of its audience signs up for Pandora One, that’s not an unsubstantial amount of money for the company.
Other services in the space have played around with this model as well. Notably, Last.fm has a monthly subscription option — but it also requires that all users not in the U.S., UK or Germany pay a fee to use their service. Of course, Pandora is currently only available to users in the U.S., so it doesn’t have to worry about some of the tricky advertising situations around the world.
In terms of how Pandora One will affect the company’s popular iPhone app, premium subscribers will also have ads turned off in the app as well. Unfortunately, the 192Kps streaming quality is limited to the web version and the desktop app only right now, though Conrad says it’ll look into possibly giving premium users on the iPhone the ability to stream high quality over WiFi. Likewise with the BlackBerry app — and Pandora will have an app ready to go for the launch of the Palm Pre on June 6, Conrad says.
It’s worth noting the that desktop app is a feature that was added at the last second when Pandora’s lawyers informed them they had to disable another planned feature from Pandora One: The ability to see the next artist set to play if you skip a track. Internet radio’s often odd rules prohibit you knowing what song is going to play next, but what’s amusing here is that Pandora was only going to show the next artist — not the actual song — but apparently that’s a no-no as well. So instead we get something much cooler: The desktop app.
Conrad and his team were planning to launch the desktop app in a few weeks anyway, but hunkered down the past week to get it done in time for this launch. I’m playing with it right now — it will definitely rival iTunes as the source of music constantly playing on my computer. And unlike quite a few other AIR apps, Conrad assures me that it has none of the memory leak and CPU-usage problems.
Sadly, you will have to sign up for Pandora One to use the app. And while the company isn’t expecting too much, that may just be the leading perk that gets people to sign up.
For roughly 95-97% of Pandora users out there, this news about Pandora One may not ultimately mean too much. You’re likely to continue to use the service exactly as you have been — for free — and Pandora’s fine with that given how well ad sales are going. But for the other 3-5%, Pandora One will undoubtedly be a must-buy as $3 a month is nothing to wipe out ads, get higher quality and a nice desktop app, if nothing else. And yes, if you happened to be one of the people that actually had the subscription version of Pandora before, you will be upgraded to Pandora One with your membership.
I’ve been a Pandora “user” for years, but never took it seriously until I got an iPhone.
Then, I got sick of hearing the same 12 songs per station. Now I ignore it again.
I can see your point, it does get one sick.
I was a huge pandora user for about 2 months. I kept hearing the same songs again and again so now I use Last.FM which does a better job of mixing it up but still not perfect.
I’m just making sure you guys know you can add multiple artists to one station… this helps shake things up a bit I’ve found.
does it really ake 12 years to come out with a desktop app lol??
I wonder if http://www.jamwee.com will offer internet radio too…i’ll look forward to its desktop app in 2021
Tell me about it! I use Pandora a lot and am frequently frustrated by the narrow selection of songs and artists (anyone else getting sick of the Shins?).
Your tcrn.ch short link didn’t work for me..: http://twitter....atus/1856971416
Yeah, just that one link busted somehow. Thanks for pointing it out.
I haven’t been a Pandora user and if I ever get an iPhone, I wouldn’t even bother to get it. What’s the point of having Pandora if there’s already tons of music in your iPhone? It almost defeats the purpose of buying one. I’m not exactly sure.
The point is to discover new music. If you have a particular song in mind, Pandora is probably not the right way to go for that moment.
Wow, long article.
This desktop app is new? I’ve been running it for a while now. In fact, I checked and it was installed on June 3rd, 2008 on my computer. Must be a new version of the same thing
Have you been using PandoraMan?
yeah Daniel. I use PandoraMan. Love it.
The desktop app that’s available now is basically just the site in AIR form… if you check out the screenshot from this article the form factor is much different.
That tripped me up at first too because he made it seem like this was the first AIR app they have ever released. In reality it’s the first one worth talking about.
Yep, you’re right Frankie. Our first attempt at a desktop app (released only as a beta) was a kind of “desktopized” version of the full ad supported Pandora site. Frankly the compromises involved didn’t really lead to a satisfying experience. We hope the Pandora One desktop application — which is a complete rewrite — is a much better answer.
Tom
CTO @ Pandora
Haha, kudos for successfully using “desktopized” in sentence. I’m looking forward to giving the new app a whirl.
Tom-
First, congratulations on the continued success with Pandora. We might read about your tribulations over time, but you’ve lived them
I’ve enjoyed the AIR application since it came out, and I was wondering if you could expand upon the differences between the new desktop ad and the AIR app. I’ve been a casual user (although bullish advocate of the service to anyone who will listen) but an improved app could definitely make me part with $3/month for an amazing service. I looked on the website but http://www.pand...com/pandora_one was all I could find.
Thanks!
Yeah sorry guys, that was my bad. In my defense, this was added right before launch so I had to tweak some things.
Updated the wording to be clearer. Yes, there was previously an AIR app that Pandora experimented with. Yes, it wasn’t the greatest. Yes, this one is much better.
Or what Tom said
I’ve been a subscriber since September. Not having to click “It appears you’ve stopped listening, is this incorrect” was worth it.
Of course paying for a service I’ve used for years is also worth it. There will be a day when we all pay for the web services we use. The VC models will no longer be able to afford to give away product for free for years on end.
V. smart move by Pandora. Can’t wait to try the desktop app.
Congrats Pandora.
Totally agree!
Just a couple notes…
First, you said the desktop app was the first one, but I don’t think that’s technically true: http://www.tech...sktop-with-air/ (That was just a port of the website though so I guess this is the first one worth talking about
)
Second, in the beginning of the article you list seeing the next song as a feature of Pandora One, but then later in the article you say it was nixed by the lawyers… I tend to think the 2nd part is true, but a clarification would be appreciated.
First part – yeah didn’t go into that but yes, they did have an app before that they’re weren’t too fond of themselves. Story was getting long so I left it out. Maybe I’ll put in a little note though.
Second part – Yeah, fixed that – my bad, l had to update that in a few places and missed the most obvious one.
Thanks for the quick response and clarifications.
I have been a paying member of theirs for a while. Is this a new fee? I can’t seem to find where to download it?
http://www.pand...com/pandora_one doesn’t have any download links, just a subscribe link, and when I click it it says I am already a Pandora One subscriber… still no download link though.
Hi Joel,
The desktop application can be downloaded here:
http://www.pand...com/desktop_app.
The subscription you bought to our older subscription product has already been upgraded to Pandora One status. Download the desktop app and have at it.
Tom
CTO @ Pandora
Thanks Tom, that was a quick reply!
BTW, this app is awesome! no more having to open a separate Firefox instance so the tab isn’t in my way.
Thanks again.
Dear Tom,
Would you please add support for folks, you know, outside of the States, as we’re kinda suffer from the fact that we cannot use this service!
Thanks,
Roman
Never mind, I figured it out.
Log into your account and at the top of the screen you’ll see “Pandora One”, that menu has a link to the desktop app, or just go here: http://www.pand...com/desktop_app
Added that link to the story as well. Thanks.
So does the subscription allow people outside US to use Pandora?
Sadly, no. Pandora is still restricted to the US.
Quote: “We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.”
I <3 pandora the site is just amazing. This is what I see every time i visit it:
Dear Pandora Visitor,
We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.
etc etc etc
Yep, the situation with Pandora outside the US is still hugely frustrating to everyone at Pandora. And as you point out, the site is pretty darn sucky when you can’t do anything other than read a letter from our founder. No fun in that. We’re still working on it and look forward to the day when we’ll have more to say on this front. Sad to say it’s not going to happen over night, but I’m still optimistic that in time we’ll be able to bring Pandora to the world.
Tom
CTO @ Pandora
ahem… VPN
Pandora is an example in “little things we do”. I clicked on “upgrade” while a song was playing and it did not just stop everything and send me to another page. It just gave me three specific points on the benefits.
Oh, and by the way, Pandora is one of the very few websites that I have requested Firefox to allow pop-ups.
Yeah, Pandora was great – until they cut us non US listeners off. Not sure how Spotify can do it while Pandora can’t?
“Of course, that doesn’t matter if the lingering online streaming radio royalty issue isn’t resolved, but that could be coming shortly as well.”
How so? Are their current projections of profitability based on some nonexistant rate or are they operating as a REAL BUSINESSS, projecting their near term profitability on REAL costs?
“So things are looking up and up for Pandora, but at the same time, the company, which has always focused on being a sustainable business (unlike some of the other music startups out there), feels the time is right to branch out a bit.”
Really? Always focused on a sustainable business, really? Until the last two days, I thought their business was based on whinging and whining about costs that were inherent to their business model and by their own claims they couldn’t sustain it. Somehow now they are going to be profitable on visual ads (which supposedly couldn’t overcome the cost of licensing), audio ads (which they weren’t going to engage in because customers wouldn’t tolerate them), and subscriptions (that weren’t going to be a part of their business because it’s antithetical to their core competency.)
I thought music was going to be free. I thought their was no way to make money based on money-grubbing labels and artists forcing exorbitant fees.
Turns out that was just whining and wishful thinking. That music can still produce a profit because people will pay for it?
And this is the post? How great Pandora is doing, how sensible they’ve been, and how they are branching out, after 2 years of boohooing and predicting free music? Seriously.
Wow, TIM, you sound a little bitter. I enjoy using Pandora and use the service almost daily. I try and take a moment when switching songs to view their ad and if its relevant, I’ll visit the site. I do the same when using my iPhone app. Maybe I’m the oddity, but when a company provides me with a great service, I don’t mind doing a little extra to make sure they survive.
And to those users who say they play the same 12 songs over and over…….its called adding stations and using Quickmix. I have 15 or so artist stations which I Quickmix and rarely hear the same song during the same day. You have to train Pandora. Its not psychic.
I have nothing to be bitter about. I like the service too. What I don’t like is lying CEOs, or begging -ass CEOs without a business… It’s hard not to find Tim Westergren to be one or the other based on his own words.
I don’t see why Ihave to become mindless and unquestioning when a good service is made laughable by its business leaders.
Again, there is not a note of bitterness in my comment. I’m just curious about TC’s attempts to claim all music will be free someday based on the slightest anecdotal evidence, but when we have real evidence of a business at the center of the free music debate starts making money through a number of paid initiatives, we don’t a whisper of a change of TC’s position. And, yes, I think Tim Westergren and everyone at Pandora has to be answering some hard questions right now if they ever want to be considered credible in any shape or form. Notice how Tom has replied to 90% of the comments but seems to be avoiding mine? How did Pandora go from needing to shut down last week to making a profit this week? How is that not the most obvious and important question being asked by everyone?
Does this new desktop app use Flash or does it use the same technology as the iPhone does to stream music? I’ve had problems with Pandora streaming correctly via Flash for months on my Mac and I’ve unfortunately had to resort to Last.fm and Slacker Radio.
I wish there were a trial of the paid version of Pandora so I could see if it resolves these issues. That would be worth $36 to me if it does.
The desktop app does use Flash but it’s a ground-up rewrite that uses significantly less resources. It runs perfectly well on a netbook for example. Love the idea of a trial version of the deskop app. That’s something we’ll have to look at for a future version.
Well I would say it’s all very cool, but until it’s U.S. only service it doesn’t make any sense to speak about any improvements. Sad.
Love Pandora — here’s my question — does the Pandora One app work with the Apple remote on Mac’s?
There is a third party app that allows me to do this, but I’d like to support Pandora, so I’m willing to buy their app assuming it supports the Apple remote. For me, this is the killer feature – cause as much as I love Pandora, everyone once in a while it throws in a song I don’t want to hear, and being lazy, I don’t want to walk over to my media center where my Mac Mini lives. I just keep my remote handy.
if you pay, there should be no timeouts.
great to see the revenue expanding, but what about costs? I heard pandora was trying to raise a big round a while back and was close to running out of money. it would be good to know before spending $36 on a company that might, as its CEO threatened last year, shut down. normally I wouldn’t raise this concern, but Tim was *very* vocal about this last year.
also, does this mean subscription is coming to the iPhone.? Tom denied in the last thread that Pandora would “sell” the iPhone version (saying they couldn’t recover their costs). Are they waiting for Apple to build the $3/month button so I can rent Pandora instead (should I want a no-ad premium version)? probably a good idea.
@steve — If you upgrade to Pandora One you’ll get an ad-free experience on the iPhone (and BlackBerry, WinMo, etc). For those that like the ad supported free experience, we won’t be charging for our mobile apps.
Our battles on the royalty front are all about managing costs and ensuring that there can be a fair value exchange between artist and service while maintaing the financial viability of the entire Internet radio category. We’re making good progress on that front, but we aren’t completely out of the woods yet. Stay tuned.
I used to be a pandora listener, but now I listen to last.fm on my G1 and laptop.
maybe with an Android app, I’d go back.
Just shared this article on friendfeed myself: http://friendfe...p-get-thumbs-up i’m really thinking about signing up… i haven’t been using pandora as much as i did in 2006-2008, but might use it more now
@Tom >> Does the new Pandora One app work with the Apple remote when running on the Mac?
A big mistake on Pandora’s part to make listeners first sign up for the premium version before downloading the desktop app. They should allows users to download the dektop app, try it out for a few days, get hooked and then sign up for the service.
Just checked and the old Pandora Air app I’ve been using still works. Not sure about everyone else, but I’ve always loved the air app.
Anyway, great move by Pandora. Easily one of my favorite companies.
No, I hate pandora. You don’t have to be hard pressed you just have to ask a serious music/vinyl hound.
I even recently wrote a post about how pandora failed me with a screen shot. But alas, no one cares if it sucks, they keep writing posts like this praising how good it is.
It sucks to be a cyclops in a sea of blind, bad music fans.
You’re not necessarily alone. Do you know how hard it is to get UB40 out of a reggae playlist? Barrington Levy, Allton Ellis, Desmond Dekker, Red Red Wine by UB40? Are you F’ing serious?!
I pay for Pandora for the year’s subscription, and would gladly pay more if I could have unlimited skips. I know that’s the music company’s streaming costs, but it would be a great feature.
Love the monetization concept. Can’t wait to hear how many paying users they’re getting a month or two down the road.
Happy to pay. GREAT service. Thanks.
Count me in as yet another not-in-the-US fan of facebook. Can’t wait until you support the 95% of the world that’s outside the 50 states.
I’ll even put my money where my mouth is and pledge to sign up for at least one year of your premium service, as soon as you let me.
LOL. Typo there. I meant “fan of Pandora”, of course.
I was a big fan of Pandora. I became bored of the lack of music it pulled. An example, I type in classical music it had only a handful and the rest is Holiday music.
A coupla thoughts:
!. I love Pandora. I am very tempted to sign up for this.
2. However, this comes on the heels of Napster/Best Buy’s $5/month unlimited streaming with 5 included MP3 download’s per month, which i was also considering (especially for my kids). Strange that TC did not cover that story — the Pandora One announcement sounds rushed, and may have been in response.
I wonder if the streaming quality upgrade will affect the quality that the Boxee Pandora app gets. It would be a worthwhile upgrade for that, actually. Anyone have any ideas?
Sorry,but,192Kbps isn’t the best quality that you can stream over the internet. I’ve been streaming internet radio through Winamp @ 256Kbps for a few years now and though it’s only a select few stations, the bit rate should be higher these days especially with consumers having home connections of 20/5(FIOS) like I do. Secondly, 192Kbps Mp3 is not better quality audio than what iTunes offered. Apple uses AAC which has been proven among consumers as a better quality codec. IMHO, Lossy codecs suck anyways & I can’t wait to stream Flac,WMA 9.2 or Ogg Vorbis. Until then, I’m not going to pay a subscription fee to get less quality…
i used dorame for a long time.
It’s easy and simple, enough for most people.
Hi,
I’m thinking of upgrading to Pandora One, I just have 1 question that I haven’t been able to find an answer to.
I have an second soundcard on my computer so I can listen to music through dedicated speakers, that way I’m not broadcasting any of the other regular computer alert sounds to the whole room. Does Pandora One open as a separate utility with it’s own audio settings? As far as I know that would be the only way I could set up my system to use the music speakers for Pandora. Please let me know, I’d be thrilled to upgrade to the subscription service if this will work.