
How Pandora Avoided the Junkyard, and Found Success  - peter123
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/technology/08pandora.html
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AlecM
I've been a Pandora fan for so long, this article surprised me a bit because
I've been so accustomed to them being on the edge of collapse. I remember
making donations years ago. I'm glad they're eating "truffle-infused Kobe beef
burger[s]" these days.

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aditya
Pretty awesome how he kept going even when they had no money in the bank. Most
other people would've given up. That and it is amazing how employees stuck
around without getting paid make me want root for them even more!

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CoreDumpling
> Every two weeks, he held all-hands meetings to beg people to work, unpaid,
> for another two weeks. That went on for two years.

What's really astonishing is how long he managed to keep this up. He must have
been an extremely good motivator and hired lots of incredibly dedicated
employees. If he didn't get his eventual lucky break, these people's lives
would have been wrecked.

There must be a lesson to be learned here, though I have some doubts if it is
repeatable.

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davidmurphy
I love the fact he earmarked $2 mil of the $9 mil investment to then go and
pay back-pay to his employees. The right thing to do.

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sachinag
I'm astonished that the VCs were OK with this. Pandora must have had crazy-ass
growth, because using new funds to pay people for past performance is very,
very rare.

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philwelch
"Some music lovers dislike Pandora’s approach to choosing music based on its
characteristics rather than cultural associations. Slacker Radio, a competitor
with three times as many songs but less than a third of Pandora’s listeners,
takes a different approach. A ’90s alternative station should be informed by
Seattle grunge, said Jonathan Sasse, senior vice president for marketing at
Slacker. “It’s not just that this has an 80-beat-a-minute guitar riff,” he
said. “It’s that this band toured with Eddie Vedder.”"

I always thought Pandora did this, but never admitted to it. Their stated
reasons for what music they play don't really add up--when I have a certain
band defined as the seed for my station, it invariably plays songs from the
various solo albums, side projects, and former members of that band.

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inmygarage
Given the economics of the online music industry, Pandora is a truly admirable
success story. I think what's great about it isn't necessarily that it's a
superior music service (since there are so many that are awesome), but that
their recommendation system is actually pretty good.

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Qz
I've found a lot of music through listening to Pandora. But I'm not their
ideal customer -- when they took away the pop out mini player I hacked
together an Adobe AIR app to replace it, mostly just cropping the pandora.com
homepage. For some reason it eats a lot of memory though.

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davidmurphy
In case anyone missed it, Sarah Lacy did a TechCrunch article & NBC video
interview last year:

[http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/25/pandora-from-near-death-
to-...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/25/pandora-from-near-death-to-
profitability-in-a-year/)

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jrockway
I like the picture included with the article. You know a company's successful
when they give everyone those incredibly expensive and ergonomically poor
cubicles instead of a $60 IKEA table.

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warfangle
Wish the photo was a little more detailed - I can't tell what brand of
headphones those are! They kinda look like Sony.. which is the aural
equivalent of that awful desk =/

