Pandora - Retrospective

+48V

hi-fi or die
I met Tim Westergren shortly after he’d mortgaged his home to keep the lights on at Pandora. His vision and intelligence are/were orders of magnitude greater than most & mine. Later we (Tim and Pandora’s CEO at the time) all served on a Congressional lobby committee in May of 2007 relating to royalty rate hearings for Internet radio. Pandora was a goldmine idea with an ambulance in tow. Thankfully Pandora survived bankruptcy (along with countless independent Internet radio stations) and it’s imprint flourished wildly despite profitability.

As more funding rolled in so did top-notch directors and CEOs; the employee count boomed. It blossomed into a scatter-fest of “grand” ideas and strategies focused mainly upon profitability. Music? Deep back catalogs went back burner. Hindsight says, necessary poison. Sigh….they ended up F’ing with the original algorithm in order to serve up more popular music in order to acquire and maintain their growing base of listeners. Fuh, at the end of the day, who’s fault and personal shortchange is that really? Dang.

I had high hopes when they bought Rdio’s assets in order to add an on-demand service. 2+ years later, major blah; considering Pandora’s resume and bank. A new directive and focus; the embers are there somewhere, yes!? Sadly, its’ since become shattered and consumed compliments of becoming a behemoth lost in a bureaucratic revolving door of devil dance cookie cutter coding. It’s like they’re years behind the competitors that went to school on their dime. A mind boggling WTF imo.

Pandora today is an unbelievably pale representation of what it used to be and the promise of what it could have, should have, become. Is this really the only survivable recipe to become ubiquitou$ and convenient? A bitchin ground breaker to heart breaker tale. It's like the demise of FM radio all over again.

The dream service is awash in the gutters of Wall Street….Sad.:(
 
Yeah Pandora has definitely gotten worse from what was. I think maybe they need to be charging more in order to build a quality product and I would gladly pay more if they came close to filling my wish list but most people won't. It's the Achilles heel of many a subscription Internet service.

When I went back to Pandora this year after being gone I was disappointed to say the least
 
I used to rock Pandora in my garage on my old touch-screen medical surplus PC, lol. But then they revamped the site with bloated code and my old PC could no longer run it smoothly. So I quit using it.

When I got my first smart phone, I wanted to try the Pandora app in my car. The commercials were so LOUD compared to the music. And it kept playing the same songs and the same ads over and over. It kept pissing me off so I quit using it.

I eventually replaced the PC in my garage and gave them a 3rd try. The site won't even run with my AdBlocker enabled. Sorry, but that's 3 strikes. I am aware that I could pay for an ad-free version, but you have to entice me with a decent free version first. They did not.

I just let Youtube play in the garage now. it will usually stay on-genre with autoplay enabled.
 
Adblocker doesn't hamper Pandora at all for me. I think my complaint would be the shallow library. Any channel I play is repeating the playlist too much.
 
I think maybe they need to be charging more in order to build a quality product and I would gladly pay more if they came close to filling my wish
Candidly, Pandora's lackluster offering today is not a money issue. It's about non-music people driving a music business. And that ship sailed about 2 years prior to them going public. Paths of least resistance and common (bean counter) denominators over-shadow their original concept, significantly. Over-simplified, it's the nature of the beast they begat...they got conghomerated, added levels of teams upon teams, and ****ed up a wet dream... with blinders on.

Bear in mind, I don't "hate" Pandora. Despite it's dumbed-down humdrum exertion, it works for most. Even me on extremely rare occasion. My rant here is just a culmination of years watching a tall ship sink-- well below it's heretofore vision, character, and potential. It's watching bloody Seinfeld in season 20. :eek:

There are still a good number of music fanatics working there but the creative coding guru teams are seemingly hog-tied/snuffed by some infinite executive level wisdom which is petrified to death of building out granular diversity options. FFS...they invented the Music Genome! They acquired Rdio which had the bar-none best & still unmatched on-demand service. WTF [sniff]
 
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An upgrade that does nothing other than remove ads? No increase in SQ? For a broken genome? No, I'll use the free version when it's convenient but not letting them annoy me into sending money. Unfortunate, as it works better than the paid streaming from Tidal or Spotify that I gave up on in disgust.
 
An upgrade that does nothing other than remove ads? No increase in SQ? For a broken genome? No, I'll use the free version when it's convenient but not letting them annoy me into sending money. Unfortunate, as it works better than the paid streaming from Tidal or Spotify that I gave up on in disgust.
To be fair, Pandora Premium (3rd tier) service does do more than remove ads. (play what you want, when you want, as much as you want, playlists, and downloads) There is also a bump in SQ on depending on platform. #cleartheair

Apple to apple comparison (strictly from an on-demand service level perspective), Spotify, Apple Music, and third place (IMO) Tidal blow the doors off of Pandora’s Premium on-demand tier.

That said, I agree that their free offering (especially on certain platforms which are virtually ad free) is a no-brainer vs. what you get vs. subscribing to their $10/mo. Premium product. They are primarily/bread n' butter advertising focused. #inliespartoftheirproblem #blinders
 
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I had Pandora back maybe 8 years ago and used it rather successfully as a music discovery service due to its algorithm that at the time worked much better than anything I have tried since. Earlier this year I tried the Pandora Premium, knowing going in that it wasn't going to work on my computer but just the cell phone. I thought that I would let it find me new music while I am working on the house during the day but it was just annoying the suggestions it was making! After a few months I canceled. Now I'm yet again between streaming services..

I have noticed that JRiver, my media center of choice, (who has tried to couple up with streaming outfits to allow their stream to play through JRiver) has started coming out with their own streaming now. It isn't "on demand" and is really in its infancy but it brings up a playlist in a long list, which looks like any other list it generates. It can be edited, rearranged, have songs taken out of it etc and it has access to metadata.. Not sure but I think I can add my own music to its stream list and shuffle all of them. It is all 16/44.1 and so sounds good. And, at least for now it's free although they call it "listener supported" sort of like public radio...
 
I used Pandora extensively for awhile. I finally got tired of them playing the same song list over and over. I moved to Calm Radio and I am very satisfied. I did flip over to Pandora recently. Sure enough, the same songs again and again.
 
I've had Pandora for years. I still find their music genome project way of curating my playlists to be great. I haven't experienced any of what has been expressed so far in this thread. And when I think about it, I still find internet radio to be freaking awesome... and Pandora is part of that "awesome."

IMHO.
 
I am cheap. I have Slacker (gone downhill in past year) and Pandora (works well for me). The basic plans for the two together cost me less than any one of Spotify and Tidal, neither of which offers me anything that I am not already getting. The one feature I liked about Slacker was off-line listening. Too bad they discontinued it for the basic plan. Pandora does offer off-line listening and It is OK for day and overnight trips.
 
I am cheap. I have Slacker (gone downhill in past year) and Pandora (works well for me). The basic plans for the two together cost me less than any one of Spotify and Tidal, neither of which offers me anything that I am not already getting. The one feature I liked about Slacker was off-line listening. Too bad they discontinued it for the basic plan. Pandora does offer off-line listening and It is OK for day and overnight trips.

I like the off line listening experience that Pandora supplies. I live in a somewhat remote area and often am without service and when that happens, I switch to off line mode. I need to develop my offline mode more to get more out of it.
 
Great. SiriusXM, possibly THE most annoying company I’ve ever dealt with, is buying Pandora. Do these a$$h013s EVER stop sending offers trying to get me to subscribe to their crappy sounding, low bitrate channels in the car? Don’t they realize my phone has unlimited data, and I have absolutely no need for their inferior services at inflated prices?

I hope they don’t completely destroy Pandora, but I’m not optimistic.
 
I gave up on (free) Pandora when the commercials seemed to outnumber the songs.
I tried it again recently and it wasn't as horrible, but they do tend too play only "the hits" for the music I listen to (mostly classic rock, with some 80's mixed in).
If I want to hear Top 40, I'll listen to FM.
I don't have a problem with them going where the money is, though. Niche marketing is cool, but limited in a business sense.

Instead, I just stream from my home server to my phone.
It's only got 11,000 songs, but at least it takes a while before I hear repeats...
 
I've had Pandora for years. I still find their music genome project way of curating my playlists to be great. I haven't experienced any of what has been expressed so far in this thread. And when I think about it, I still find internet radio to be freaking awesome... and Pandora is part of that "awesome."
Definitely. I'll be sad when it goes away. It was announced yesterday morning that SiriusXM is buying Pandora. Knowing how Sirius totally destroyed XM's superior programming and dumped their program directors and on-air talent, they'll similarly screw up Pandora. (I bailed from XM the day that the switch occurred.)

The Music Genome Project is exactly what it's all about--Pandora's streaming service grew out of that project. The idea was that music was tagged with numerous attributes, and the theory goes that other music with many similar attributes should sound similar. It has worked well for the handful of well-trained stations I have (a couple of them dating back over a decade). So many I've found (especially on music forums) don't "get" that idea. They feel if they type in "Fleetwood Mac," then all they should hear is Fleetwood Mac. And my explanation falls on deaf ears. :rolleyes: Whatever. Don't like it? Go use Spotify or whatever else is out there. I use Pandora for discovery of new music and it has cost me a lot over the past several years. :D Too many ads? The $3.99/month I pay is perfect, and I listen to it 2-3 hours per day (usually during the dinner hours). No ads whatsoever.
 
Great. SiriusXM, possibly THE most annoying company I’ve ever dealt with, is buying Pandora. Do these a$$h013s EVER stop sending offers trying to get me to subscribe to their crappy sounding, low bitrate channels in the car? Don’t they realize my phone has unlimited data, and I have absolutely no need for their inferior services at inflated prices?

I hope they don’t completely destroy Pandora, but I’m not optimistic.

Well, aye and oh my. Chin up mate...the glass is ermm, at least 1/3 full. LOL.

As my old Marketing 401 professor back when said, "nothing happens until something is sold". Some may have to chew on that for a good while, but it'll come around and ring true eventually. I've stood by that considerably salient and quipy axiom since it was planted in my head by Dr. Thompson 42 years ago. ;)

Pandora courted, SiriusXM offered, and poof. S/XM snatched damn near a 20% stake in the margin starved Pandora... round about this same time last year.

So, for me, this acquisition is no real big surprise. Frankly, the back channel writing was plastered all over the wall 18+ months ago. SiriusXM was and is in dire need of an on-demand streaming music service as well as a boost to their stale radio offering. While their satellite service has an above average churn rate, it still has damn good annual revenue and net income rolling in. Thanks in no small part to their grandfathered (read asininely protected) music royalty rate(s). Ergo S/XM's years of bottom line black ink and Pandora's years of bottom line red ink.

Market things are waning for S/XM. As terrestrial broadband infrastructure and connectivity improves, at any given future point they may as well lease their skybird feed exclusively to the military and/or Easter Island residents. I digress.

I could be wrong, but from my best guess crystal ball, I don't see S/XM monkeying much with Pandora's present shtick, feed or formula. They will keep and leverage Pandora's immensely strong branding (especially for their enviable stronghold on the auto dashboard market).

If anything "immediately", it will most probably affect and make redundant their present in-house cookie cut music programs & curator staff. Only the most appealing/popular/celebrity DJ's and talk/sports channels will weather this $torm via www simulcast. Their mission at that point will be to up-sell a segment of customers to the commercial-free Pandora Premium on-demand tier. [sigh] Given Pandora's current offering in this space it'll be like the blind leading the blind but I'm certain they'll garner some considerable bites from the masses. I digress... part deux.

The bright side @chicks is that (at least in my opinion--see OP) is there really anywhere to go but up for Sirrius/XM, Pandora, and consumers at large? As great as Pandora was and as shitty-tired as S/XM is on the music side, things may improve S/XM's offering overall with respect to content and SQ. I dunno. My OP diatribe wasn't all that flattering to Pandora of the present. So let's just say it's a relatively low bar hurdle for both bitches. LOL

With streaming now accounting for 70% of industry revenue, the bloody gold rush for the few fat-purse participants is approaching if not well into half-time. This is a locker room rally for both Pandora and Sirrius/XM. And of course this merger has the potential to be a train wreck as viewed from the eyes of connoisseurs like us--but I betcha it'll make some damn good short term cash flow. OK, so now we're right back to non-music people running a music business.

Thankfully/Luckily, there's a good swell of competition in this space and I'm reasonably content with my options right now. Yet, I do and will continue to lament about what did happen and could have been with Pandora's genesis and genome.

My Zen solace chant to myself is; imagine for a minute what things would be like today had Pandora never existed.

:whip:Ohmmmmmm.... namaste?
 
Pandora Premium finally available on Echo and other Alexa devices. I’ve tried, but the Alexa app hasn’t yet updated in the app stores to support this. Later today, maybe..,

https://www.theverge.com/platform/a...5/pandora-premium-amazon-echo-alexa-available

Edit: Guess this will be done entirely in the cloud. App hasn’t updated, but Pandora just disappeared from the list in the Alexa app. Work in progress...

Edit: Hours later, Pandora still missing from the Alexa app. Finally asked Alexa to play one of my Pandora stations, which worked. Then, Pandora magically showed up in the Alexa app, including the ability to set is as default music and/or station provider.
 
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