
Pandora is laying off 7% of its US workforce - doppp
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/12/pandora-is-laying-off-7-of-its-workforce/
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rm2889
After I discovered Pandora back in 2010, I haven't looked back. While it lacks
ability to play a song on demand, where it truly outshines are its
recommendations. Maybe its the nature of their recommendation algorithm - they
call it the music genome project; a content based recommendation ending using
very finely refined categorizations as opposed to the methodologies most other
recommenders follow - a mix of collaborative filtering and content-based, but
not as detailed on creating categories that a song can fall into.

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.

~~~
samsolomon
Most of the time I don't want to pick a song. I want to listen to a certain
genre and just have music play. Pandora was perfect for me. I paid for Pandora
ONE for 5 years.

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.

~~~
aswanson
I liked spotify but requiring a fb account to listen is pretty lame. Don't
know if they've modified that requirement.

~~~
magic_beans
How opposed would you be to creating a shell fb account with zero personal
info and a fake name, in order to log in to products? I realize you shouldn't
_have_ to take this extra step, but so many wonderful products DO require an
fb login...

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aswanson
I'll pass/do without. Products should not force users to take any action they
are opposed to.

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grogenaut
I've told this before but I haven't used pandora since they wouldn't stop
playing me ashley madison ads even after I complained to support about it.
They said they only played ads that network tv would run. Every other ad for 6
months was asking me to cheat on my wife.

We all know how that went.

~~~
nradov
You know you can eliminate the ads for $3 a month, right? It's pretty cheap
compared to the other streaming services.

~~~
withdavidli
You're likely talking to the wrong user base. There's a reason why ads
business models work, people rather deal with ads than pay anything.

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.

~~~
grogenaut
I guess. We actually talked on the phone. When the lady said that to me I
said, "Are you seriously trying to make that claim." Silence. Then she made
some non-apology and ended the call.

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sytelus
I really think Pandora should start full on-demand music service for
additional subscription fee instead of just being radio. Playlist creation and
sharing is becoming huge but still in fancy from tech perspective. Lot of
people are stuck on particular service just because of their carefully created
playlists over long time. That generates significant sticky factor. I've
personally paid Rhapsody subscription for couple of years without much using
it just to keep my playlists alive. This in addition can massively help
improve radio itself. Also it can eliminate all that nonsense of not allowing
to skip unlimited number of tracks. In my opinion, Pandora still has best of
the best radio service (although far from perfect) and if they can supplement
that with huge catelogues like Google Music with family subscription, there
would be one more reason to stay there.

~~~
thirdsun
They bought rdio. A service that was regarded by many, including me, as the
best streaming service, certainly better than Spotify and with a thriving,
enthusiastic community of music lovers - even today I still can't comment on
or discuss albums, playlists and songs with others in Spotify, which is a
social graveyard.

And then they shut it down.

~~~
pepr
That's exactly why I like Spotify - it doesn't shove the social nonsense down
my throat like everybody else. Don't take it the bad way but I don't care what
you, or anybody else with very few exceptions, thinks about this or that
album.

~~~
Touche
Does Spotify still not allow you to save favorite albums/songs in some sort of
personal library?

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viewer5
It does allow you, that's all I use.

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bchar
Right up until you hit the 10,000 song limit, which took me all of a couple
months to reach. It's not a service built for music enthusiasts.

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pokemon-trainer
My wife listens to and enjoys Pandora daily. She especially enjoys the curated
playlists put together by Pandora. I remember the gimmick at launch had the
system build playlists for you based on your preferences. It's interesting to
see how the service has pivoted to provide a more radio station-like
experience.

What other services do folks enjoy? What's the best streaming service out
today?

~~~
toomanybeersies
I use Spotify since I get it for free with my mobile phone provider (well, not
actually free, but it's cheaper with my provider than on its own).

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.

~~~
bleachedsleet
Apple Music has Taylor Swift if I remember correctly

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throwaway91111
AM is missing other things, like beyonce's latest album.

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ascagnel_
The music streaming services are competing now with exclusive albums (this was
Tidal's big draw; are they even still around?), to the detriment of their
users.

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new_hackers
I am also a Pandora fanboy. I pay for their ad-free service. I have heard more
"new to me" music through Pandora than any other source, and for that I am
truly grateful.

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gtirloni
So about ~150 people (Wikipedia says they have 2200+ employees).

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Dylan16807
Wow. What do all those people do? What's the difference between a 100 employee
music streamer and a 2000 employee music streamer?

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kaspm
I would like to know this too! Say my team has 40 people on it. Every month at
least, someone asks what do "40 people do?" and I take them through it 2-4
people at a time across several lines of business maintaining and improving
lots of software.

Would be amazing to see some people break down their teams publicly!

~~~
duncanawoods
Agreed - it would be a great bit of content-marketing for a recruitment
agency. Lever, TripleByte, Muse... one of you sort it out please!

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pinaceae
Article talks about Apple Music and Spotify - but I think they're is a bigger
problem: Amazon Prime Music.

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.

~~~
ra1n85
Use Amazon Prime, but they'll need to deliver a bigger catalog and better
recommendation feature for me to try Prime Music. I have hundreds of songs
saved in Spotify playlists, love the selection, as well as the recommendation
feature (Discover) - Spotify is sticky for me.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Totally. I pay the $15/month for Spotify family (up to six people); I have
Amazon Prime and I've never once used a Prime digital service.

~~~
Cyph0n
Prime Video is very good by the way. Their original series catalog is
expanding, but they also have other great shows available. For instance, you
can stream lots of popular HBO classics for free (Curb, The Wire, etc.).

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.

~~~
ascagnel_
My problem with Prime Video is that Amazon is that there's no good way to
watch it on your TV, unless you feel like buying their own streaming boxes.
They refuse to release an app for Apple TV or Android TV, the Roku channel is
merely serviceable (like all Roku channels), and the PS4 and Xbox One apps
don't work as expected (for example, the Xbox One app doesn't respond to the
official hardware remote's play/puase button).

The experience on their own hardware is great; everything else is second-
class.

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runj__
I remember emailing Pandora in what must have been 2008 realizing about the
fact that I could not use the service from Sweden (I had been a foreign
exchange student in high school in the US). I got a reply from Tim Westergren
which felt huge.

I would not be as much into 80's synth pop without Pandora, that's for sure.

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fourthark
Last.fm was the only one that worked for me. Musical preference is a perfect
social recommendation problem.

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.

~~~
pmlnr
Spotify is lightyears from Last.fm both in personal recommendation and
album/artist/track radios.

I really miss last.fm :(

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edblarney
Music streaming/distribution has to be a heavily commoditized business.

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.

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yeukhon
I miss turntable.fm. If only Spotify / Pandora has it, then I am a happier
customer.

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bleachedsleet
This is such a non-issue for many users, but the simple fact that Pandora
requires flash on their web interface is a deal breaker for me.

~~~
burkaman
They switched to HTML5 like 5 years ago.

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selectodude
Pandora asks me to install Flash on Safari 10.

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cmelone
Change your user agent to Firefox and it should load the HTML5 version

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bleachedsleet
A well designed website shouldn't require a user agent change to get added
functionality. If I have to mess with my user agent, install resource heavy
plugins or change my browser of choice to use your service, then you just lost
me as a customer.

~~~
frozenport
Safari is the new IE

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FireBeyond
"Looks good on my rMBP and iPad Pro, ship it!"

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stuckagain
Sucks because it's practically the only tech company in Oakland.

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notte
Not exactly. Ask.com is in Oakland! Makes my date everytime I see the logo on
that high rise off of 880.

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deadowl
The company that fired their mascot?

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notte
No, Jeeves wasn't fired, he retired.

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probably_wrong
Maybe now they'll finally consider expanding to Europe?

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.

~~~
disiplus
have you tried last.fm.

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.

~~~
probably_wrong
last.fm and Spotify both have the same problem:

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.

~~~
disiplus
sorry i did not have that feeling with last.fm, i had the premium feature of
last.fm ( before they removed it ) so you could not request a song but you
could play a playlist based on tags or artists ( if i remember it correctly )

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.

~~~
pmlnr
I second this, last.fm suggestion in and radio in 2010 was better than spotify
in 2017.

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ossmaster
Funny this comes right after they released a brand new app, after they had the
same old web app for more than 4 years it seemed.

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chefandy
Funny. Just saw a medium article where some talking head from Pandora was
giving patronizing advice about how to fire people.

