
Pandora: From near-death to profitability in a year - jrwoodruff
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/25/pandora-from-near-death-to-profitability-in-a-year/
======
skolor
Pandora is the only service that I regularly think "I should be paying these
guys money". In fact, a while back I decided that the next time I hit the 40
hour limit I will be upgrading my account with them.

In case anyone working with/at Pandora is reading this: you guys are awesome.
I've gotten more new music from you than anywhere else. I noticed you seem to
have changed your algorithm lately (At least, in the past few weeks I've
suddenly gotten a LOT of new music) and I like it a lot.

~~~
rgr
I like Pandora a lot but a couple of months ago I switched to last.fm because
it gave me more variety. Maybe it's time to check out Pandora again -- though
last.fm is still 100% free.

~~~
cmos
I just switched to last.fm from Pandora. The last straw was the same video ad
for 'Mercy hospital' every single time I changed stations.

I have to admit that listening to last.fm is a completely different
experience. There are a much deeper selection of tracks and I was thrilled to
hear a 24 minute DJ Shadow song.

I wish pandora the best, and I was ok with the occasional video ad. But every
time I change a station? If it was every 3rd time I might have put up with it.

~~~
paul9290
Coding at my new job I tried out Pandora and after a few days I kept hearing
the same music. My test is eclectic and I like hearing folk to jazz to
alternative to 80s to etc ... Pandora does not seem to offer this type of
station, but Last.fm does as if you trained it via a plug in it knows exactly
what genres you like and the artists in those genres.

Also, I use Fire.fm firefox last.fm toolbar which is great as it puts play
controls right into firefox and last.fm does not need to be open!

~~~
skolor
I'm not exactly sure about those particular mixes, but I know I end to get
good results mixing genres in Pandora by using the "Add Variety" feature. I
also find that keeping the window open and just pausing it stops the
repetition, they tend to only repeat songs you really, really seem to like, or
they will only once per page load (per station).

~~~
paul9290
Cool thanks. I might give it a try. Though prefer last.fm's toolbar (fire.fm)
as no site needs to be open, there are play controls at the bottom of firefox,
as well it tells you what's playing. As I code/test within one Firefox window
I prefer not to have to switch tabs to control music, learn who is playing, as
well heart or ban the track playing. Though maybe Pandora has similar toolbar?

~~~
skolor
They have a desktop client, but you (apparently) have to be a member for that.
I'm not sure about the features, but I would think it would allow for that.

~~~
AlexMax
It does, and it works on any platform Adobe Air works on. It's 30-something
bucks for a whole year, and totally worth it for not having your music tied to
the browser being open.

------
rscott
I'm a huge Pandora fan as well. For some reason one day I decided to quickly
profess my love for them via email and actually got a response asking if I
wanted a shirt or hat. This blew my mind, and I rock my Pandora baseball tee
often as a result.

~~~
physcab
What's your shirt size? We'll send you a t-shirt (or a few!) if you're willing
to try our service. And actually, I'll extend this offer to any HN
reader/user.

Chris from Grooveshark.

~~~
cmars232
Grooveshark looks nice! Pandora's been recycling the same songs too much for
my tastes lately, and I'm getting bored with it. I also wish I could easily
access the "station logs" later.

I like the fair use policy on the copyrights page a lot.

Are you really going to be able to let users drive to the exact song they want
to hear, even after critical mass builds up? Seems too good to be true. I
always assumed that was how Pandora managed to keep the heat off (by not
letting users pick the exact song when they want to hear it).

~~~
physcab
Thanks! Our new version is even nicer :) You can go to preview.grooveshark.com
to check it out.

To answer your question, yes, we will always have a search-and-discover
interface because that is where our real value comes from.

As far as critical mass is concerned, we are doubling about every 2-3 months
with absolutely no marketing or PR (which is why you don't hear about us on
TechCrunch very often). We've got a lot of work ahead of us in terms of
scaling to meet demand, but so far we're handling it well.

------
blhack
Perhaps I am weird but every time pandora recommends me a song and I really
like it, I bookmark it. I do this so that if I end up deciding I want to buy
it, I can click through to amazon from them and get them some referal money
:).

It really says something about how good you are doing if people will go out of
their way to make sure you get paid.

------
vaksel
I started out with Pandora, but then they added that 40 hour limit, seeing as
how I have the radio on 24/7, I hit that the 3rd day. So I started looking for
alternatives and quickly found grooveshark, they completely blow Pandora out
of the water with their selection and you can actually pick the actual song
you want to play right away.

Their autoplay feature is a little bit less refined than Pandoras, but I
actually like that, since with Pandora I ended up listening to the same 30-40
songs over and over again, since it kept reccomending the same songs.

~~~
physcab
Thanks! I'll pass the good feedback on to the rest of our team. We're working
hard to bring you more features. I'm actually working on the autoplay
algorithm right now so any feedback is quite helpful. Drop me a line anytime.

Chris from Grooveshark

~~~
sarvesh
I use Grooveshark and I agree that the autoplay is very naive compared to
Pandora. A better autoplay algorithm will definitely help but it is hard give
you feedback unless we know what you are trying to do with the new algorithm.
Currently, correct me if am wrong, your algorithm for recommendation is
heavily biased toward genre. It is really hard to discover new songs that I
like with it and that's when I fall back to Pandora.

~~~
endtime
I like how you and vaksel gave diametrically opposed suggestions...poor Chris.

~~~
physcab
Haha you'd be surprised by how many people love the current autoplay despite
it's drawbacks. I have a feeling we're not hearing from the people who don't
like it because they end up going to Pandora for better recs. I think it's a
problem we can solve though. By our next product launch we'll have the logic
in place to make both user groups happy.

------
jrwoodruff
Glad to see these guys doing well, I've been a rabid fan since a friend turned
me onto the service four(ish) years ago.

Although I don't entirely understand the last line of the article "Pandora
will be a textbook case for why execution matters more than vision in tech"

I get that they've worked their asses off to make it a reality, I think the
vision of smart music recommendation and discovery is what drove the
execution. ??

------
manny
just putting out there that pandora totally crushes deezer and last.fm when it
comes to music selection for artists or songs you enter in.

------
zackattack
This is excellent news for Hip Hop Goblin!

~~~
Raphael
Every day you're hustlin'.

