Apparently, Pandora, which I was just praising the other day, is in big trouble thanks to looming internet radio royalty hikes. Good news for incumbent broadcasters!
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Uh, Oh
05 May 2007 03:21 pm
Comments (9)
I'm not impressed. The new rate is about 2 cents per hour. If Pandora is as good as everyone says, they'll sell plenty of time at 50 hours on the dollar.
It's not the rate that's the problem, IIRC.
The $500 per-channel minimum? That does seem a bit problematic as Pandora doesn't really have channels. But I imagine they could argue that the service is a single channel.
I would love to encourage everyone to get behind the new legislation. Pandora is great and has introduced me to tons of great music, and I'm an avid music BUYER.
To give one example of how cool Pandora and the Music Genome Project are, I started putting together a laid back electronica station the other day. I started with the band Shpongle and then started adding band and songs seeds here and there to move the sounds and beats in the desired direction and breadth. I've complied a list of potential seeds but I like to feed them only occasionally to see where things go, to give a new seed time to move the music in the intended direction. On three separate occasions as I was itching to put another seed artist in, Pandora played them without my suggestion at all!
That's cool stuff, and literally all three times when I was waiting for a "wrong song" so that I could put my next seed in (you add artists and songs to "seed" the musical styles you're looking for) - I wasn't just contemplating it, I was about to put those artists in, and I've only put a grand total of less than 15 seeds in so far.
To the curious, the three predicted artists were, in succession over 8-12 hours or so, DJ Krush, Dub Pistols, and DJ Cam. The first two I was literally going to plug them in at the next "wrong song", DJ Cam I was really contemplating as my next choice but was going to wait awhile because my desired reggae/dub/electronica vibe had finally also started kicking in (along with the jazz, blues and other forms of electronica I wanted predominating).
I've made another cool station of punk-influenced, lo-fi guitar rock a la Pavement, Luna and The Clean, to name a few seeds, and this Pandora and Music Genome Proect is the bomb. I've been exposed to so many new bands I had no idea existed because I'm not obsessive about keeping up with the latest stuff anymore (like I was when younger and dialed in).
If you are unfamiliar with how Pandora works, and want to hear and see what's going on with it, send me an email at freelixir at yahoo dot com and I will send you an email invite to my "shared station".
You won't be able to vote for songs or seed that station, but it will give you an idea of the quality of music that is available, as well as some good suggestions to start your own station with in terms of seeds.
Be sure to distinguish between lo-fi guitar rock or the laid back electronica.
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Comments closed May 19, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
They've also just been banned from broadcasting outside the United States.
Posted by Brian Ulrich | May 5, 2007 3:59 PM