Pandora is laying off 7% of its US workforce
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I know I'm sounding like such a fanboy but I discovered some of my favorite bands and artists after hearing them first through Pandora's recommendations. I've often heard songs I liked at random places, shazammed them, and created a channel on Pandora, which has led to some really good artists that I would've never heard through other media. So for music discovery, Pandora is where its at. I really hope this company sticks around.
And you can fill the gaps in their catalog by uploading your own music.
Tldr: I really don't see the case for pandora in 2017.
It does a great job caching songs ahead while you're on Wifi, so you can minimize data usage while out and about. Plus, with the caching it also works offline perfectly well.
I feel a bit sorry for all the other services, but on a technical level Google Play Music has outplayed them all entirely.
There's recommendations at the bottom of individual playlists now so I can look there but still a pain that I can't get a nice mix in my discover weekly.
It's ok, there's Spotify now, which doesn't arbitrarily ban users for living in the wrong place. Spotify has become a much better, much more flexible service. Even if Pandora were to lift its ban on foreigners, there is no longer a market for their service here. Sorry Pandora, you had the momentum, but threw it away.
But that's all ignoring the actually source of these restrictions. They don't come from the services themselves. They come from the outdated music industry structure that hasn't kept up with the internet-enabled globalized world.
#2: It is the case with ALL music and video streaming providers. Apparently you lucked out with Spotify, but that could be the opposite for someone else.
Stupid, yes... but the bad guys here are the record labels rather than the streaming services.
This year I cancelled and moved to Spotify.
For $2/month it was a great product and a great deal. But the product didn't change over a 5 year period. I found stations got stuck into the same set of songs and would stop adding new ones. I wonder win the last time the Music Genome Project was updated? More infuriating, their buggy Adobe Air desktop app was never fixed or updated.
Three years ago the price moved to $3/mo. Two years ago it moved to $4/mo. This past year they got rid of any grandfathered discounts and charged $5/mo. I was sick of paying more for the same product and jumped ship. I do miss my radio stations, but Spotify's prebuilt playlists are pretty good replacement.
There was this odd bug on some stations that caused unrelated tracks, at least from a human standpoint, to play. Most notorious were some classic rock stations. After a couple hours of play, they'd start playing comedy. I could understand if there were some parody bands or musicians like Spinal Tap or Tenacious D seeding the stations, but these stations had none of the sort.
Google play music actually works great for both of these functions, but the app is extremely unstable on my phone (Moto X running 5.1), so it isn't an option for me.
Eg, why are we still using playlists? I want to be able to sort/listen to my music by tags, ranging from "cool" to "energetic" to "happy". Ie, a string tag, a tempo tag, and an emotion tag. I want to be able to filter queries to an arbitrary number of tags and genres. I want to be able to filter by who it was produced by, who played in it, per album or per song.
Most of the features i want don't require any complex content recognition algorithm. And yet, like it's 1990, most of the music apps i use (spotify, google music) lack what i consider to be basic features.
Why did Gmail "pave the way" with tagging instead of folders, and yet i'm still stuck using Playlists in Google Music? Why does Spotify support a nice rich community for playlists, but seemingly won't let the community add meaningful data to songs, albums, etc and then let me query my song collection from that?
I know, i'm sure there are plenty of mp3 players and etc that do this just fine - but i use Spotify, and i want the features in there. I want a streaming collection of on demand music. I like the variety. I'd kill for my above features with a Spotify-like package.
Turns out that what most people really want when they say "I want to be able to sort/listen to my music by tags" is something that feels like a curated playlist, where the songs naturally work together one-after-another without being jarring, usually within some music category if not within a narrow genre.
Are those all the same artist? The same album? The same genre?
My point in the above questions is that of course a single field won't perfectly fit to all songs in existence, but "fit" is subjective. If i want "up tempo" music, and i don't request anything else, then give me all up tempo music. Rage rock, rap, symphony, all of it. I can refine the filter if i want.
This allows me to query "play me all up tempo music from Dave Matthews Band". "Play me all happy music from Dave Matthews Band's album Live at the Rocks", and etc.
> Turns out that what most people really want when they say "I want to be able to sort/listen to my music by tags" is something that feels like a curated playlist, where the songs naturally work together one-after-another without being jarring, usually within some music category if not within a narrow genre.
Clearly that's not what i want, as i am extremely dissatisfied with Playlists.
Expecting all music to somehow be grouped into non-flexible folders (which is all playlists are) seems silly to me. Do you think i shouldn't be able to Search Google/Internet for custom terms?
Why can i not search music for custom tags, but i can search for genres? Having tags doesn't mean Playlists can't exist, but it can allow me to refine my UX to exactly what i want. I'm sick of curated Playlists, and i'm tired of trying to remember all song names in existence to build my own. I want better data to build collections of songs.
Who wants to follow Van Halen's "You Really Got Me" with the Endaro Mahaanubhaavulu? Answer: nobody. So you need to define genre. OK, you select "Rock". Now "You Really Got Me" is followed by "Non E Per Sempre." Oops. Still the wrong genre - and also the wrong language.
So you specify "English" words and try to tighten the genre. Now this is harder: is Van Halen "hard rock" or "metal" or "glam rock" (answer: could be any of the above). Pick the wrong one, and you'll accidentally expunge "You Really Got Me" from your listening experience, or include a bunch of Poison and Tesla songs, and you really hate those bands because you think their lyrics are dumb.
Uh-oh. Now you need a way to categorize the thoughtfulness of the lyrics.
The fact is that the requirement that most listeners have is something much more intelligent than a database search. If you've attempted to use the music genome project to find music, you'll know what a difficult process it can be. The music it returns is extremely hit-or-miss - and it is exquisitely tagged. By the way, I do think that the music genome project will solve your particular requirement "show uptempo music from Dave Matthews Band."
I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm saying it requires next-gen AI to (A) adequately categorize music on all needed dimensions and (B) assist the user in forming meaningful queries.
I'm also saying that the experience of radio broadcasting over the last 50 years is that listeners almost always want something that feels extremely familiar and highly curated....
Of course, that's why you combine filters. You keep speaking of single queries.
tag:uptempo tag:epic instruments:guitar genre:electronic
I'm not saying it will be perfect. I'm saying right now we have nearly no useful ability to discover music. I'm extremely dissatisfied with music discovery, and i have no control in most applications.
> I'm also saying that the experience of radio broadcasting over the last 50 years is that listeners almost always want something that feels extremely familiar and highly curated....
Which sucks, because it's clear most popular products (Spotify/etc) agree with you - and i detest it. I have been given zero, completely zero meaningful features to interact with. At best i have magic in the backend to "hopefully maybe implement what i might want". There is no interaction to allow me to try and shape this with any meaningful feedback over what each interaction does.
What does this Heart do? Is it permanent or is it just temporary? How do i build a dynamic playlist off of a mood? How do i remove certain artists/genres/instruments/vocals from the mood?
Most music playing services give me absolutely nothing. And it's terrible, to this user at least. I just want features, and no one is implementing user facing features.
edit: To be clear, i'd settle for community tagging. Hell, i'd setting for the ability to tag posts myself, with no other contribution. I can't even play music by a tag i define. I promise you, i can manage to tag some music myself - but i have no ability to do that. The best i can do is build a playlist, which is like 1990's Mail folders. Completely useless for dynamic applications.
About 99% of "innovation" these days seems to focus on logistical non-issues instead of the essence of things.
It may not be the correct term of "disrupt", i don't follow the startup culture too closely - all i mean to say is, most products i've seen have bare bones discovery methods and don't let the user help inform the platform about what discovery they want. It would be like Searching Google if the only thing it gave you was precompiled lists of sites you might like.
So, i long for someone to "disrupt" this space by providing obvious (to me) content discovery and categorization methods. If you could provide me with a Spotify-like solution, and throw in meaningful ways to search, filter, discover, etc content? I'd switch in a heartbeat and i'm sure music lovers would spent quite a bit of time on that platform in the same way that they contribute to Spotify.
Pandora's model of not having that feature will always outweigh their music matching algorithm.
The last one is something that no other service I have encountered even considers (maybe Spotify has some recording info?). Also their API was a joy to use and very helpful support staff.
Sorry for the rant, especially when comparing your observation to something that no longer exists.
Edit: but one can hope that Pandora will put all of that wonderfulness together one day in to their own product.
We all know how that went.
Though your suggestion would solve one set of problems, it doesn't solve the fact that it was an inappropriate ad with a crappy response from the company if true. Guess network tv allowed, includes those 2am ads.
IIRC it was like 70$ for premium. You know the radio and their competitors were free back then right, and the radio had less ads? I had actually paid previously but they screwed up my account a few times, I forget the details.
Now I get prime music with my prime account and a bunch of other stuff including video for $9 a month.
I thought it was pretty dumb to pay for a service where I couldn't pick what I wanted to hear. I also didn't play for XM at $10 a month when it came out.
Yes, not a great response however the time value of calling in to complain easily exceeds $40.
Fortunately, at least some people value their principles more than their time.
His principle was that he found the ad unpleasant and didn't want to hear it anymore.
I'm all for fighting for what you believe is right but it's a bit exaggerated when you're aren't forced to use the service, can pay for the service to remove ads and yet you claim to stand on principle.
If you were standing on principle, you would refuse to use Pandora because they are funded by an "unsavory" company and not just call to say you didn't like the ads playing on the free service that they're providing to you.
And that $40 saved apparently got me 40 hacker news points as well ;).
You cheated on your wife?
Though yeah, that's an offensive ad to have to encounter.
And I have nothing to confirm this, but I doubt preserving playlists is a common reason to keep paying for a music service. If you really want it, you can find a way to export it, or copy it by hand. Otherwise you just make a new playlist from scratch.
Its even harder to compete if your product is crappy... which is essentially what the OP was suggesting.
> If you really want it, you can find a way to export it, or copy it by hand.
The thing is that most people don't really want it. Therefore it is significantly harder to move to Pandora than it is to leave Pandora.
And then they shut it down.
In my case, without social features and lack of discussion Spotify is relegated to a simple preview hub for music I discovered elsewhere with an incomplete catalog. I'm considering dropping my subscription since I buy and own my music anyway.
The community and the discovery through it is the feature that made rdio special. Bandcamp comes close since the users are also very passionate. Spotify, however? Discover Weekly can't replace real human curation. The results are either already known to me (which Spotify should know) or just very mediocre. It falls short like most other recommendation engines.
Thanks for writing. There is a 100 station limit on all accounts, free or paid. You'll need to delete some stations you don't listen to much anymore in order to create more. To delete a station, click on 'options' and select 'Delete this Station. Sorry for the inconvenience, but thanks for your support!
That was the day I switched to Rdio. I loved Rdio up until the day Pandora shutdown the service. I most certainly didn't go back to Pandora after that.
Now I'm pretty happy with Google Play Music. Hopefully they won't nerf it.
This doesn't happen at all with Spotify. And maybe it wouldn't work due to the rather mainstream audience / user base the service has. The problem remains however: The music I listen to and buy is very rarely discovered on Spotify. I can't share the rave reviews of Discover Weekly at all. - it's very mediocre to me.
My Discover Weekly used to be pretty mediocre until I started better curating my playlists. I'd grab a playlist, throw it on in the background and call it good enough. There were certainly songs that I didn't like playing, and the algorithm had no way of differentiating what I did and didn't like.
I pruned my playlists so that the music playing is only stuff that I highly enjoy. This made a huge change to my Discover Weekly and my Daily Mixes.
Yet, Discover Weekly keeps recommending me music that is already known to me (or even part of those playlists) or simply not that relevant. My Bandcamp feed does a better job.
What other services do folks enjoy? What's the best streaming service out today?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
Here ya go: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/youtube-music/id1017492454?m...
One exception I noticed a couple of years back is that Pandora started playing Mumford and Sons on pretty much all of my stations. I like their music, but it is definitely not dubstep, so something fishy was definitely going on. That year M&S was Pandora's highest paid artist.
Discover weekly is usually really good and choosing good music, it's a shame that it's only once a week. Spotify radio is also usually quite good and making a playlist of songs based on an artist or a song.
They also now have "your daily mix", which I'm fairly sure only takes songs that you've listened to before, but often gives me songs I haven't heard in a while.
They also have running radio, which matches songs to your running pace. I don't use it though, since I don't run.
I haven't used any other streaming services out there, but Spotify does everything I need it to. The one thing it doesn't have is Taylor Swift, but none of the streaming services do.
Before Spotify, I had actually never paid for music, I'd usually torrent it (or sometimes use youtube). But the sheer convenience of Spotify has caused me to hand out a few bucks a month for it.
The Discover and Daily Mix options have been great. It's brought dozens of great artists and tracks to my attention that I don't know I'd have found otherwise.
I'm sure they're likely also on other services, but I really like the instrumental versions of some albums (by RJD2, Aesop Rock, etc) - often makes them good options for the office.
But with Pandora on various user-surly devices (car stereo, Roku, etc) I just don't have that interaction and it seems like playlists just drift off into nonsense or repeat endlessly.
Thanks for pointing this out! I had it set on Automatic and it sounded consistently like 128kbit CBR MP3 or worse (maybe they were sending down their 96kbit Normal stream - yuck). I switched it to Extreme now, hopefully that solves my issue.
You won't find many, if any, big names on there but I see it as a great service for independent music. They also have discovery pages to explore genres.
It takes some work to use but I at least don't feel like I'm cheating bands on it.
Would be amazing to see some people break down their teams publicly!
Bezos is killing the streaming space with 'good enough' services all bundled into the same, basic Prime subscription.
The Prime Music app on iOS got updated last year and it even looks great.
Streaming music is a commodity, good luck fighting for scraps.
Oh, and the video player is excellent. The "X-Ray" feature is pretty nifty when it's done well: it lists on-screen actors, name of music playing, and general trivia. The Prime Video Android app is surprisingly smooth as well, and in my opinion is as good as the Netflix app.
For me, it's essentially a free video service, as I already need Prime for the free shipping.
The experience on their own hardware is great; everything else is second-class.
Today was the first time I've listened to pandora in close to a month. I've been listening to playlists through Prime Music .. the free version. I listen through our echos, my phone and my desktop. I haven't missed the tailored station I've built through Pandora over 10+ years. I think you are correct with "good enough."
Oh, and the Pandora Premium doesn't sound like much of a game changer unless I missed a killer feature:
I agree that streaming media is becoming a commodity. If Amazon made modern apps and shelled out some cash for better libraries, they could deal serious blows to Spotify and Netflix.
Yes, but for a very casual streaming music listener like myself who also has a pretty big music library on iTunes, free (with Prime) + Echo makes paying for any other music streaming service just not worth it. I'll take my free streaming and buy a song or album every now and then with the savings.
Amazon is somewhat inferior to Netflix in streaming. I have both in this case. But there are Amazon exclusives as well plus again, for many people, what's available with Prime is good enough to not make it worth paying for Netflix.
I would never pay for Prime Music on its own but it's a nice throw-in. I can also see why it would be good to have with an Amazon Echo.
I would not be as much into 80's synth pop without Pandora, that's for sure.
Pandora's supposedly socially-neutral algorithms always circled in on tighter and tighter loops of bland.
This was a bunch of years ago. Maybe they fixed it.
I really miss last.fm :(
Moreover, even the music itself is heavily commoditized, it's hard to eke out a living unless you build a major brand, or can 'roll your own' fanbase.
I don't even understand how Spotify can stay in business in the long run with competitive margin erosion.
Perhaps when the industry shakes out, the major streamers will have some value chain power and hold onto their margins.
In the meantime, I'm weary of Spotify's valuation as long term credible.
I don't know if their own hype is true, but I always wanted to try their music recommendation service. It used to be that you could at least play with it (get similar song titles, even if you couldn't listen to them), but now I can't even see the main page.
i loved the service before they where bought by cbs, i used it to stream music, the playlist created where great and i could discover new music. now with spotify its the same songs or artists all the time.
Let's say I like this one song from a Chilean singer. Not that album, not that singer, just that one specific song.
What both systems do is recommend "here is all of South America's music, and here are all Chilean singers from that decade". Did you pick a Chilean rock song from the late 80's? Here's a Peruvian Charango song from the early '90s. They don't know anything about the songs themselves, only their network effect.
Pandora's "Music Genome Project" was supposedly designed around this issue, but I can't say whether it actually works or not.
the suggestions where great, i loved that feature. i still scrobble from my desktop to last.fm and im in 98 percentile of all users. i listen to a lot of music and with spotify i get the felling its always the same , it cannot learn my preference so i have to manually search for playlists that im ok with.
i would say i listen to deep house mostly, but there is also rock, and hip hop, but i get only the latest edm tracks in my recommendation playlist in spotify, with lastfm i would get indie rock and hip hop artists.