Pandora on the iPhone
The first iPod that I bought cost about $375 with my college discount. It had an outrageous 60GB capacity, had the capability to display photos, and was only about .6" thick. When I showed it to my grandma the next time I was home, she was so impressed that she'd have believed me if I told her I could use it as a missile launcher.
-- On another note, this is the same grandma who, when we called her in 1995 from our Macintosh Performa 5200 with built-in speakerphone, believed my dad and me when we told her we were calling from the computer and could "see her." Apparently she waved at the ceiling a lot that morning. --
When I was home for Christmas last year, I was helping my dad with his own iPod -- now with video capabilities -- and showed him how to organize his ever-growing music collection. I shared stories with him about guys I knew from college that had long since filled their hard drives with twenty thousand + digital songs and needed to invest in beefier storage options.
As I explained this sort of behavior to my dad, it got me thinking about how we as a culture have been becoming digital pack rats ever since the internet exploded and especially since broadband connections have become so widely available. My first digital pack rat 'fix' came on November 15, 1999 with my first digital music download on Napster: Metallica -- So What (kind of funny when you think about it). Next was Rapper's Delight, and then some Steve Miller Band.
As a junior in high school, I considered myself to be a pioneer of illegal music downloading. I was one of the first in my class to have a collection of more than 1,000 songs; 2,000 songs; 10,000 songs...
Once I got to college, Napster had long been shut down and Kazaa and Morpheus were the new addiction of my fellow music consuming paupers. But when I saw some of my friends getting nabbed by the recording industry, settling lawsuits for a summer's worth of wages, I decided to quit while I was ahead. And I survived on my meager 20,000 songs for two years...until Pandora came along; in person.
Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, came to Virginia Tech in 2005 to speak and promote his not-yet-popular website and music service. When my girlfriend (now my wife) came to tell me about hearing him speak, we jumped on the computer and listened for hours. "Try Uncle Tupelo," I said. Our request for was granted initially, but after the song finished, we were introduced to a different band...one with similar 'country influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, major key tonality, and melodic songwriting.' Three years later, an old Pandora recommendation is what we used for our wedding song.
Now, with so little effort, using only the bands that I knew, I was able to discover new music. The next time I was talking to the hipsters at the college radio station (where my wife worked as the general manager), I was able to transcend my poseur reputation by name-dropping some esoteric band names whom I'd only recently discovered on Pandora. In an environment where what you're listening to determines your social status (right along with hair color) I was no longer the GM's redneck, top-40, loser boyfriend. I was the guy who could spit out chord-striking names like Spoon, Tom Waits, and Son Volt.
The great thing was that I didn't have to put any effort into it. Of course, there are many that would dread not putting any effort into their pursuit of musical omniscience. Not me. As a simple beast, I enjoy having music on when I work, hearing stuff that I like, and occasionally jotting a band name or a song down that I really like. My days aren't spent scoring record stores for obscure collections and rare live recordings. My days are spent living my life -- working, spending time with friends and family, writing, playing with the dog, and fixing stuff around the house. And as long as I had an internet connection and a set of speakers, I could let Pandora do the dirty work. As a DJ is hired for receptions and paid to keep his mouth shut (hopefully -- nothing worse than an obnoxious DJ that sings along) and play music that we're all going to like, Pandora had become my little DJ slave...but only at home.
The only downside to Pandora as I saw it was its need for a wired internet connection. It was fantastic at home, but as soon as I hopped in the car or went for a walk, I needed to break out my iPod, which had no risk of becoming obsolete as long as my cable modem was Pandora's ball and chain -- which it was until the other day; the operative word being until.
When Apple and Pandora announced the Pandora application for the iPhone, everything changed. The Carl Lewis of music was no longer tied to his starting blocks.
I remember five years ago when the iPod was criticized for not having FM radio capabilities. When the iPod evolved into the iPhone and the iPhone started carrying the Pandora application, Apple's MP3 player instantly became the ultimate music machine, now with smart, CD-quality streaming internet radio. With the now-impressive mobility of the internet, today's young music connoisseurs will be the first generation that can live without ever owning a single record or downloading a single song. Remember the old days? You'd hear your favorite songs on the FM radio in between "No Money Down! Sale of the Century!" car commercials. No Mas...
Of course the musical pack rat will never die. And we'll still all have our collections, which I predict to start shrinking slowly as our lists of custom radio stations grow. We all need to have that small collection of singles that we can play at any time to bring us back to way back when. But the rest of the time, when all we want is a DJ to play things we like without commercials, we'll turn to Pandora, whether at home or on the road.
Look out XM and Sirius: you've got more competition than ever! Subscribers: If you've already been considering getting an iPhone and currently pay for XM or Sirius, this is the perfect time to justify the op-front cost. And if the folks at Pandora were smart, they'd do some market research to help customize their ad selection based on music preference and possibly physical location. Af far as I can tell, whether I'm listening to Ronnie Dyson Doo-Wop or Queensryche 'Opera Metal,' the ads don't change. Something tells me there's a bit of difference between Trace Adkins and 50 Cent fans' product preferences.
As always, I can't wait to see what happens next. :-)
-- On another note, this is the same grandma who, when we called her in 1995 from our Macintosh Performa 5200 with built-in speakerphone, believed my dad and me when we told her we were calling from the computer and could "see her." Apparently she waved at the ceiling a lot that morning. --
When I was home for Christmas last year, I was helping my dad with his own iPod -- now with video capabilities -- and showed him how to organize his ever-growing music collection. I shared stories with him about guys I knew from college that had long since filled their hard drives with twenty thousand + digital songs and needed to invest in beefier storage options.
As I explained this sort of behavior to my dad, it got me thinking about how we as a culture have been becoming digital pack rats ever since the internet exploded and especially since broadband connections have become so widely available. My first digital pack rat 'fix' came on November 15, 1999 with my first digital music download on Napster: Metallica -- So What (kind of funny when you think about it). Next was Rapper's Delight, and then some Steve Miller Band.
As a junior in high school, I considered myself to be a pioneer of illegal music downloading. I was one of the first in my class to have a collection of more than 1,000 songs; 2,000 songs; 10,000 songs...
Once I got to college, Napster had long been shut down and Kazaa and Morpheus were the new addiction of my fellow music consuming paupers. But when I saw some of my friends getting nabbed by the recording industry, settling lawsuits for a summer's worth of wages, I decided to quit while I was ahead. And I survived on my meager 20,000 songs for two years...until Pandora came along; in person.
Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, came to Virginia Tech in 2005 to speak and promote his not-yet-popular website and music service. When my girlfriend (now my wife) came to tell me about hearing him speak, we jumped on the computer and listened for hours. "Try Uncle Tupelo," I said. Our request for was granted initially, but after the song finished, we were introduced to a different band...one with similar 'country influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, major key tonality, and melodic songwriting.' Three years later, an old Pandora recommendation is what we used for our wedding song.
Now, with so little effort, using only the bands that I knew, I was able to discover new music. The next time I was talking to the hipsters at the college radio station (where my wife worked as the general manager), I was able to transcend my poseur reputation by name-dropping some esoteric band names whom I'd only recently discovered on Pandora. In an environment where what you're listening to determines your social status (right along with hair color) I was no longer the GM's redneck, top-40, loser boyfriend. I was the guy who could spit out chord-striking names like Spoon, Tom Waits, and Son Volt.
The great thing was that I didn't have to put any effort into it. Of course, there are many that would dread not putting any effort into their pursuit of musical omniscience. Not me. As a simple beast, I enjoy having music on when I work, hearing stuff that I like, and occasionally jotting a band name or a song down that I really like. My days aren't spent scoring record stores for obscure collections and rare live recordings. My days are spent living my life -- working, spending time with friends and family, writing, playing with the dog, and fixing stuff around the house. And as long as I had an internet connection and a set of speakers, I could let Pandora do the dirty work. As a DJ is hired for receptions and paid to keep his mouth shut (hopefully -- nothing worse than an obnoxious DJ that sings along) and play music that we're all going to like, Pandora had become my little DJ slave...but only at home.
The only downside to Pandora as I saw it was its need for a wired internet connection. It was fantastic at home, but as soon as I hopped in the car or went for a walk, I needed to break out my iPod, which had no risk of becoming obsolete as long as my cable modem was Pandora's ball and chain -- which it was until the other day; the operative word being until.
When Apple and Pandora announced the Pandora application for the iPhone, everything changed. The Carl Lewis of music was no longer tied to his starting blocks.
I remember five years ago when the iPod was criticized for not having FM radio capabilities. When the iPod evolved into the iPhone and the iPhone started carrying the Pandora application, Apple's MP3 player instantly became the ultimate music machine, now with smart, CD-quality streaming internet radio. With the now-impressive mobility of the internet, today's young music connoisseurs will be the first generation that can live without ever owning a single record or downloading a single song. Remember the old days? You'd hear your favorite songs on the FM radio in between "No Money Down! Sale of the Century!" car commercials. No Mas...
Of course the musical pack rat will never die. And we'll still all have our collections, which I predict to start shrinking slowly as our lists of custom radio stations grow. We all need to have that small collection of singles that we can play at any time to bring us back to way back when. But the rest of the time, when all we want is a DJ to play things we like without commercials, we'll turn to Pandora, whether at home or on the road.
Look out XM and Sirius: you've got more competition than ever! Subscribers: If you've already been considering getting an iPhone and currently pay for XM or Sirius, this is the perfect time to justify the op-front cost. And if the folks at Pandora were smart, they'd do some market research to help customize their ad selection based on music preference and possibly physical location. Af far as I can tell, whether I'm listening to Ronnie Dyson Doo-Wop or Queensryche 'Opera Metal,' the ads don't change. Something tells me there's a bit of difference between Trace Adkins and 50 Cent fans' product preferences.
As always, I can't wait to see what happens next. :-)
posted by Scott Bliss @ 6:40 AM
1 Comments:
At July 22, 2008 11:23 AM ,
Steve said...
Pandora rules - I've been using it since 2004 or 2005. I've also had XM since 2004. Pandora's custom stations beat the hell out of any of XM's stations, although there are quite a few XM ones that I like.
XM and Sirius can also be streamed on the iPhone or the internet. They see the competition and are trying move quick. But, they are sticking with blind broadcasting - no adaptive or custom stations like Pandora.
I plan to keep XM in my car for the foreseeable future - ATT's network doesn't have the coverage and reliability of XM for driving. XM also has comedy, talk radio, and sports that other services don't provide.
But, this does lend a huge amount of credibility to XM and Sirius's claim that a merger does not constitute a monopoly due to satellite radio's competition with terrestrial radio, iPods, and internet radio. When they first made that claim, a lot of people called BS. I've always thought that was a legit claim, and Pandora on iPhone is a perfect example of why.
I don't have an iPhone and don't plan on getting any new phone until early next year when my Verizon contract runs out. By then, phones will be out that run Google's Android OS. Android promises to be more flexible than Apple's software, and has the potential to have many more applications due to the open source nature and flexibility to run multiple types of hardware.
If Android actually delivers, is available on a network that doesn't suck (Verizon 700MHz??!), and works well with iTunes and Pandora, then I might consider trashing XM. If it doesn't, an iPhone might be in my future. Either way, I'm not going to stop listening to streaming music, and I'm not going to stop being cheap about it.
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