Pandora Case Study
At that time, a vast majority of music list tenets were still getting their groove on in one of two ways: They either popped a CD into the Eire home, car, or personal CD player or they turned on the old AWAY FM radio. But the advent of digital formats Like Amps has had a huge Impact on CD sales and has drawn people away from what Is n owe called “terrestrial radio.
” Moreover, like the music business, the radio business has faced m ajar changes of its own. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 reduced limitations on the number of SST actions that one owner could hold.
This led to huge ownership groups that consolidated and standard ‘zed listening formats. The result is less diversity on the radio, with shorter playbills and fewer artist TTS represented. From one city to the next, all across the United States, radio stations have started to s mound more alike.
Both these trends – combined with the explosion of Internet usage and changes In online technologies – have led to a deluge of companies trying to capitalize on the future of music distribution.
This includes download services such as Tunes, subscription services s chi as Rhapsody and music, an endless number of Internet radio stations, and even satellite radio nee outwork Sirius. Today, with an ever- growing list of listening devices and cloud music services that store personal music libraries so they can be accessed anywhere by any device, listening try ends continue to evolve. But one thing about the future is certain: The business of listening to music is full of disruption and confusion. Things are changing fast and the winning products and SE Emcees?indeed, the survivors?are yet to be determined.
The Power of People
Amid the chaos, Pandora has carved out its own niche, setting Itself apart as an auto mated music recommendation service. It Isn’t a play-on- mean service, winner memoirs can simply condos the exact song and artist they want. Rather, listeners enter an artist or song squeegees n. The plastic starts with a track by the requested artist and inserts additional songs by that artist e very once in a while. But in between, Pandora cues up songs by other artists similar in nature to the requested material. If an unlinked or unwanted song plays, the listener can click the “thumbs do n” icon or Just skip the song and it will be removed from the list.
Users can also create stations by BRB sowing artists alphabetically, or they can tune in to pre- made genre stations or to other users’ stations. Listener’s can create as many stations as they wish, each oriented around the initial input. Lots of online services employ similar recommendation features (think Nettling and Am axon). But Pandora has set a precedent by the predictive power of its recommendation soft ware. The Pandora software is amazingly precise at choosing material that fits with what the us r wants.
According to Tim Westerners, founder and Chief Strategy Officer for Pandora, the sec ret sauce is the people behind the software. Behind this digitized, automated, software- driven machine, Westerners says, muff need a human ear to discern. It’s true that the algorithms mathematically match songs, but the math, all it’s doing is translating what a human being is actually measuring. ” O Marketing – An Introduction. 1 lath edition (2013) page 27 of 45 Each of the 850,000 songs from 80,000 different artists in Pander’s library has been analyzed and coded by a professional musician.
Each song is rated on as many as 50 O different musical attributes or “genes.
” Each gene corresponds to a music characteristic, such as gender of the lead vocalist, level of distortion on the electric guitar, syncopation, and vocal harmony sees, to name just a few. Pander’s music analysts must pass application tests. As Junior analysts, t hey are required to sit in the same room with other analysts so they can regularly peel back their head phones and engage the others about the music they’re coding. Senior analysts can take their work
