Pandora Trying Out Invasive Commercial Breaks

Nathan Halverson writes "The popular online radio service Pandora.com has added brief commercial interruptions to its service. Pandora says this is a trial and is targeted to a subset of listeners at this point. In one case, a brief ad for the Fox TV show 'Lie To Me' interrupted the music stream for about 15 seconds after ten songs had initially played, and the same commercial interrupted 22 songs later. 'But [Pandora's] founder promised the site will never carry as many audio ads as broadcast radio, despite the fact it pays substantially higher royalty fees to the recording industry.'"

Comments

We need a spam filter for radio

[captainpanic]

I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out adds (without making too many mistakes).
I've always wondered why this doesn't exist for TV.
And I wondered what you should play during the adds... a random mp3 from your computer perhaps?

Alternatively, you can also switch to another station :D

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Roland Piquepaille]

I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out adds (without making too many mistakes). I've always wondered why this doesn't exist for TV.

Isn't that what TiVo is for?

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[wjh31]

or go for the premium service. I dont know how pandora works exactly (im in the uk), but lastfm has a premium service, i assume if last fm were to ever resort to adverts, they would offer a premium service without them, and if more people were to take up the premium service before such a time, they are less likely to need to add ads to the free service

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Joce640k]

I just mute the TV sound when the adverts come on, you'd be amazed at the difference it makes.

(Obviously this doesn't work too well with radio...)

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[bytesex]

What I don't understand is why TVs don't yet have a function that not only mutes it, but also makes the screen almost dark. So that you can just spot when your program is back on.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[xlotlu]

I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out adds (without making too many mistakes). I've always wondered why this doesn't exist for TV.

Sorry to disappoint you, but you don't need to pay for MythTV. From the features list:

• Completely automatic commercial detection/skipping, with manual correction via an intuitive cutlist editor.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Anonymous Coward]

My grandfather used to turn off the tv when the commercials came on, and we would sit there in awkward silence until he turned it back on. He became surprisingly good at turning it back on at the right time. We convinced him into something with a mute button in the early 90's

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Sobrique]

No, that's what BBC Radio/TV is for. Don't put the ads in in the first place = almost an hour's worth of content per hour, and no need to filter them back out again.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[daveime]

Yup, and for which you pay a hefty fee every year for, otherwise the detector vans come round and scan your ass (do they still have those, haven't been in Blighty for nigh on 8 years ?).

It's a similar situation with the cable TV here. While they don't run "traditional" commercials as such, they still manage to interrupt the show every 15 minutes with pointless trailers for other shows which will be airing during the week.

SO I don't think you EVER get a full 60 minutes of programming in each hour ... which is perhaps just as well, otherwise when would you run to the toilet, or make a cuppa ?

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[LunarEffect]

I guess you could just buffer the radio/TV for 2 minutes in advance (depending on how long the show is you want to see/listen to). The program would then stop buffering the show for the duration of the advert and continue recording as soon as the adverts finish, enabling you to watch/listen to the show in one interruption-less stream.

...that would be...
- Buffer estimated ad time (pre-record the beginning of the show)
- Start playing the stream
- If an ad appears, pause the recording
- Continue recording after the add
= Interruption-less viewing/listening pleasure xD

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Jellybob]

From what I've heard the detector vans were an urban myth. They do now us a database to work out who hasn't bought a license, and then knock on the door now and again to check up on you.

Quite honestly though, I don't mind the license fee. If it wasn't there I'd be paying for cable anyway, so it's not like I'm losing any money, and it's far better value for money.

Also, they don't "interrupt" anything for trailers for other shows. The trailers go in a 2-3 minute slot between shows. And if you're using iPlayer, which is almost exclusively my source of TV now, you don't even have to put up with that.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[MrMr]

Yup, and for which you pay a hefty fee every year for
And advertisement agencies are charities that offer their services for free?
You have already paid for the advertisment through the inflated product price.
Why should you pay a second time in the form of wasted time?

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[xaxa]

Yup, and for which you pay a hefty fee every year for, otherwise the detector vans come round and scan your ass (do they still have those, haven't been in Blighty for nigh on 8 years ?).

£140 a year. The alternative seems to be that the money comes out of general taxation.

It's a similar situation with the cable TV here. While they don't run "traditional" commercials as such, they still manage to interrupt the show every 15 minutes with pointless trailers for other shows which will be airing during the week.

The BBC never interrupt a show. Any trailers are shown between programmes.

SO I don't think you EVER get a full 60 minutes of programming in each hour.

You get about 58 minutes though.
08:00.00 trailer for a program
08:01.00 screen saying what's on now/next on a few channels
08:01.39 programme starts
08:59.30 programme ends
08:59.31 now/next again

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out adds (without making too many mistakes).
I've always wondered why this doesn't exist for TV.

I've heard that people still watch TV on TV. Quaint!
Just use BitTorrent. One person edits out the ads, and thousands save the time wasted watching them.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[xelah]

From what I've heard the detector vans were an urban myth. They do now us a database to work out who hasn't bought a license, and then knock on the door now and again to check up on you.

I don't have a TV, so I know how TV licensing behave. Enforcement is mostly based on fear. If you aren't on the licence database they will write to you every three-ish months with one of a rotating set of letters. These say things like 'WARNING AGAINST UNLAWFUL ACTION', or look like fake bills, or tell you you've been added to their enforcement list and that 'Enforcement Officers' will visit in compliance with PACE (and, presumably, the Geneva conventions and the nuclear test ban treaty....). They give you a phone number they want you to ring to get yourself on a database of people declaring they have no TV. Then they write to you and say they're going to visit you anyway (and then don't) and start the letters again six months later. Meanwhile they're running (billboard) adverts saying things like 'last year we caught 157,000 licence dodgers' and 'seven people in Ebscombe Close don't have a licence'.

In eight years I've met exactly one Enforcement Officer (they're private sector contractors with no special powers). Conversation with them go like this: Him: Do you have a television. You: No. Him: Can I come in? You: No. Him: That's all I need to know [goes away].

It appears they only catch people by knocking on the door and hearing a television. They have no power of entry, and need some shred of evidence of a crime to get a warrant from a magistrate. Besides, I get the impression they can't be bothered and are quite keen on getting through their list ASAP.

BTW, you need a licence for watching television services at or nearly at the same time as it's being broadcast. This applies to using computers for that, too. But you can watch them later with no licence at all. (I don't do either, ICYWW, if I wanted to watch TV I'd have a TV).

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

We used to have a VCR that would auto-FF through commercials during recorded shows.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[martin-boundary]

You don't play anything during the ads. You stream the music to your hard drive, and start listening a couple of minutes later. This gives the filter time to snip out the bits. Then, if you run out, you can stop listening for a half hour and do something else, etc. If anybody asks, just say you liked the ads :)

If you're using mplayer to listen to a stream (not just audio, video can work too), look up the -dumpstream option. Then open a second instance later and just play the dump while the first instance continues to download.

Theoretically, it shouldn't be too difficult to filter out the ads programmatically. By definition, they have to be sufficiently different from the background music to be noticeable to the listener, so standard signal processing methods should have a field day. Moreover, if they're prerecorded, they'll probably get reused several times, so it would be possible to learn the ads over time.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're willing to pay money to take money away from this company, but you're not willing to listen to a 15 s ad. Broadcasters make money from ad revenue. Without it, they shut down. Then there's no broadcast for anyone.

If you don't like their service, don't use it. Don't try to hack the matrix to save 15 seconds.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[kimvette]

How do you expect them to pay for their cost of operation, and yes, this includes reasonable salaries for their owners and employees, preferably at market rates not poverty level livings.

Do you object? Is one 15-second advert after 10-12 songs too much? Of course not.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[AgentSmith]

Don't try to hack the matrix to save 15 seconds.

Uh. Yeah. Like what he said. Friends don't let friends hack the Matrix.

Actually, I was just listening to Pandora while reading this article and reading the comments.
About halfway through the Lie to Me ad turned on. A minor interruption that sounds like
ads you see in and hear at movie theaters.

Pandora. It's a nice radio service with customization. The fact that I can pick and choose my music style
is miles better than conventional radio. With normal radio I find myself having to change the station
every few minutes to dodge the commercials. Yes, radio is also free and stations still need to make money,
but ads have gone way over the limit in order to make it profitable. Even my local PBS radio station has
ads promoting itself. Way too much signal to ad noise ratio.

Like the parent poster said you don't like it then don't use it. But if Pandora is so bad
what other services are people using and why? Even without the ads are they really better?

Until the recording industry's back is finally broken this is what we have to deal with people.
Be you a king or a lowly street sweeper everyone eventually dances with the RIAA reaper.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[nahdude812]

Pandora already offers this. A $36/yr subscription eliminates the ads.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Anonymous Coward]

MythTV needs constant maintenance and it's much less user-friendly than other TV products out there.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[diskofish]

Id be willing to pay for Pandora, but frankly there just isn't enough music at this point. If you have a broad selection of music on your station, you probably won't get repeats. In my situation, I've created a station for NY style hip hop, but have yet to hear anything I haven't heard before since I started listening. In fact, it seems like Pandora is just using a series of playlists and including them into a bigger playlists based on your tastes. If they added a bigger variety of music, and perhaps stuff that was only released on vinyl, I would definitely pay a subscription fee.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[fyrewulff]

There was a bunch of TVs in the early to mid 90s that sold with a feature called "Smart Sound". My grandmother (rest her soul) got one. The difference was amazing - what it did was normalize the sound so that it was all level.

What this mostly neutered was all the TV ads that crank the volume up. With the smart sound enabled TV, you could barely hear them, because the TV quieted them down to match the show, and so the poor mixing to make the commercial sound loud made it so it didn't "stand out" so much.

Unfortunately from what I remember, there were lawsuits from what I remember, and the feature disappeared from those brand of TVs.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[redxxx]

Tivo doesn't do any filtering though. They need to teach it to do two things.

1) Add a skip forward backward feature that looks for abrupt changes in the image. If 100% of the broadcast image changes from one frame to the next, that's obviously either a gap between commercials or scenes. Now, they hang all sorts of logos and letter boxes around the signal, so it would need to have a variable threshold and probably look at a few different factors(actual pixels, aggregated measurements colour and brightness, totally black frames, etc). That's actually pretty easy to manage. You can flash the firmware of most cannon camaras and install software that will take photos automatically off similar info.

2) Allow people to subscribe to a free service that tracks what parts of a given show people skip over and what parts they watch. Which means unless you are watching the show very close to live, the crowd would have found where most of the ads are, with pretty good accuracy if the above was implemented and enough people used it, and your player could skip them automatically(if it was too inaccurate you could always rewind a bit, because you'd have recorded the whole show like normal).

Ok, yeah, I don't trust TiVo track my behavior like that, and it could be hard to get a large company with a lot of corporate ties to do it, but I don't see too big a reason it could be strapped on to myth TV or what have you.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Asic Eng]

You could use MythTV - it has pretty good commercial detection. I timeshift everything, so I don't really need to wait while the ads are on - I just enable autoskip.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Lord Byron II]

I had an RCA TV in the middle of the 90's that had a commercial skip function. You'd hit the button on the remote and a 30-second countdown timer would appear on the screen. You kept pressing the button until you had set in the expected length of the commercial break. Then, you could channel surf as much as you wanted and when the countdown timer hit zero, you'd be flipped back to your original station. It was dead simple and worked surprisingly well.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[shark72]

Rather than looking for a third party to pay for the service of filtering Pandora ads for you, why not just subscribe to Pandora? It's $36 a year. That's $3 a month. You can afford it.

Sadly, the tone of many of the posts so far is that Pandora is now evil. That's really quite sad. They've been providing you a free service for years, while absorbing the cost of broadcast royalties.

I've been a Pandora subscriber for a while. Not so I'd get anything out of it (but as a bonus, I'm not hearing the ads), but because I believe in what they do and because they've helped me find a lot of great music.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[multisync]

Alternatively, you can also switch to another station :D

That's what I came here to post. My favorite station is commercial-free and listener-supported. I encourage people to seek out stations and other business who are employing this business model and support them.

This is really the best response to the idiotic behavior of the MPAA and RIAA. Don't "steal" music and movies, support those who are offering an alternative. They can call us "thieves" all they like, but if we can point to examples like RadioParadise - which exists solely because people voluntarily send them money when they could simply be free-loaders - it really deflates the argument that people are not willing to pay for something they can also get for "free."

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[OolimPhon]

I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out ads (without making too many mistakes).
I've always wondered why this doesn't exist for TV.

Already available, it's called Mythtv.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[denzacar]

That would require digitally "flagging" commercials. Or, an online database that would hold "signatures" of known commercials.
Slap that on a digital recording system that would recognize commercials either by flag or by signature - and there is your system.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[afidel]

Or you could roll your own with Mediaportal and use Comskip to automatically filter the ads for you.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[OolimPhon]

MythTV needs constant maintenance and it's much less user-friendly than other TV products out there.

Initial installation? Yes.
Upgrade if you want to use new features? Yes.
Constant maintenance? No.

It's only less user-friendly if you set it up that way. There are schemes which make it very easy to use.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Montecristo6]

Listening to music sans ads has value to you. You are naturally willing to pay up for the privilege. What baffles me is that you prefer to hand the resources over to a third party, which would filter the ads, rather than to the *content providers*, who would then be able to eschew the ads in the first place, and continue the service you enjoy!

Follow your choice to its logical conclusion. Pandora has costs and a perfectly legitimate desire to earn a rate of return on time and capital. They persuade advertisers that people who listen to their streams will buy the shilled products. You say, "bite me", and use a filter. Advertisers realise no one pays attention to their message on Pandora, and terminate their contracts. Pandora folds. You are left with a license for an ad blocker, and static in your headphones. ... profit?

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Abcd1234]

MythTV needs constant maintenance

No. It doesn't.

and it's much less user-friendly than other TV products out there.

s/much/somewhat/ and I'll agree.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[TheKidWho]

Maybe you should move out of the UK?

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[harlows_monkeys]

I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out adds (without making too many mistakes). I've always wondered why this doesn't exist for TV

The problem with that solution is that it does not scale. If everybody did it, the broadcasters would go away.

A scalable solution would be for you and others like you to pay money to the broadcasters to not run ads.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[harlows_monkeys]

I just mute the TV sound when the adverts come on, you'd be amazed at the difference it makes.

(Obviously this doesn't work too well with radio...)

With radio, what you want to do is mute the video during ads.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[squiggleslash]

I've always wondered why this doesn't exist for TV.

It kinda does

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out adds (without making too many mistakes). I've always wondered why this doesn't exist for TV.

Isn't that what TiVo is for?

Last I saw, StationRipper was recording Pandora songs. As each song goes in it's own file, I would imagine it would be easy to just delete the commercials from the songs downloaded.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out adds (without making too many mistakes).
I've always wondered why this doesn't exist for TV.

Perhaps what you are willing to pay isn't the same as what they need you to pay.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out adds (without making too many mistakes).
I've always wondered why this doesn't exist for TV.

It's been done -- "ReplayTV" hit the market around the time Tivo did, but they a had commercial skipping feature Tivo didn't. They got sued out of existence.

That's why you won't see many commercial products. WP notes that there are some non-commercial software projects out there that do commercial skipping though: "DVRMSToolbox" and Comskip

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[s_p_oneil]

I'd be willing to pay for a program that filters out listeners/viewers who install those programs. You don't want to see/hear the ads? Then you shouldn't have free access to the content. TANSTAAFL.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Wizzard]

"I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out adds"

Last time I checked, you can pay money--to Pandora. It's a paltry $3/month, and that gets rid of all the ads. If you enjoy the service, why not support them?

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Rich0]

Uh, mythtv already does #1 on your list (using a half dozen different algorithms, including blank screen and logo detection).

It doesn't do #2 - probably because #1 works great 95% of the time...

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[gknoy]

Use streamripper to save files as separate MP3s; then, just delete all the ones that are less than ~30 seconds long.

That doesn't work well for live streaming, of course, so it's not quite what you want.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[redxxx]

keen. Tivo still hasn't implemented them, even though it is a problem with obvious solutions. All I was getting at. I'm glad, but not surprised, to hear it has been solved.

The holidays hit my wallet more than I'd have like, but a MythTv box up near the top of my project list. I also need to educate myself about HD a little bit.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[scatters]

It called an annual subscription. $36 per year gets you all the Pandora you want sans advertising.

It amazes me that people see more value in an ad blocker for ad supported products like Pandora than they do for the product itself.

Stop being cheap and start supporting innovative companies and products.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, I live in the US. The only question I'd have for the TV Enforcement Officer would be whether he preferred a .38 slug from my Sig Sauer, a polite double-tap from my Glock 9mm, or a quick blast to the face from my Remington 12-gauge.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called automatic gain control and, due to the way it inherently works, will also reduce the dynamic range of the show's audio, so everything may sound duller and even perhaps less exciting. For example, whispers and quiet bird chirps will be brought up in volume, and explosions and raging waterfalls down, somewhat lessening the dramatic experience intended (at least usually) by the creators. A light amount of this is good, since each show is produced differently and in differing quality, but generally a mute during commercials suffices for me.

—Mozk

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[acohen1]

I checked out my friend's MythTV. The commercial detection was acceptably mediocre for most stuff, but sucked horribly for cartoons like Simpsons or Family Guy. Also, HD stuff was full of weird motion artifacts that didnt exist on the live stream, but it may have been too aggressively compressed.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Tom]

Enforcement is mostly based on fear. If you aren't on the licence database they will write to you every three-ish months with one of a rotating set of letters.

The fear works both ways, though. Many years ago I was tired of that and wrote them a stern letter essentially saying "don't contact me unless I contact you first" as well as the keywords "harrassment", "lawyer" and "lawsuit".

Never heard from them again, for almost ten years now.

YMMV

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Haeleth]

Fortunately, I live in the US.

Where you can't get decent ad-free TV and radio for any price. Oh, what a blessing that must be!

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[facelessnumber]

So you're willing to pay money to take money away from this company, but you're not willing to listen to a 15 s ad. Broadcasters make money from ad revenue.

Why couldn't we just pay the broadcasters? A buck or two a day from me to not hear any ads is more money than anybody's going to make off me through commercials anyway.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[facelessnumber]

You say, "bite me", and use a filter. Advertisers realise no one pays attention to their message on Pandora, and terminate their contracts.

Oh right! Just like spam filters have stopped all email advertising, and AdBlock on Firefox has taken away all the banner ads on the web!

I see your point entirely! Advertising is good for everybody, just look what it did for UseNet!

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Carnildo]

Rather than looking for a third party to pay for the service of filtering Pandora ads for you, why not just subscribe to Pandora? It's $36 a year. That's $3 a month. You can afford it.

I would, but they don't have a secure subscription page. They claim that the pretty orange padlock icon they draw in the flash player is proof that the connection is secure.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Montecristo6]

Spam is irrelevant to this matter. AdBlock is indeed a good analogue. You did note that I prefaced the second paragraph with "follow your choice to its logical conclusion", right? Yes: if a large enough fraction of New York Times' site's visitors use AdBlock (or ignore the ads using more old-fashioned means ;)), the company won't be able to provide it to them anymore. Now, I do not claim that this is incontrovertible evidence, because there are lots of factors at play, but it is notable that "big media" is going through an absolutely brutal time in the past 10 years trying to figure out how to make ends meet.

It's a simple bargain, at the end of the day. You can think the content is useless, and not allow the owner to sell your attention to advertisers; or you may like the content, and then you either must put up with ads, or pay for it. Liking the content, but then proceeding to pay someone else to circumvent the ads is just perverse. If everyone does it, Pandora is gone. If just you do it, you're a free-loader.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Lulfas]

Magnavox. My parents bought theirs in 92 and kept it till last year when it finally broke beyond my ability to repair. They got a new tv now, and watch much less TV since the volume goes up and down so much.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[facelessnumber]

"big media" is going through an absolutely brutal time in the past 10 years trying to figure out how to make ends meet.

Oh, but I'm crying such a river for big media. Times are changing and the sooner we stop fighting it the better. Think of all the poor telegraph operators who lost their jobs when phones came along, or all the horse traders who went out of business 'cause of that damned Henry Ford and his tin lizzie. How COULD they have built the railroads knowing that the faithful old Pony Express would go bankrupt?

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes the ads are funnier than the show or movie I'm watching.
I actually watch most of the ads, unless I get up and into the kitchen to make me a mudslide :)

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Montecristo6]

Your analogies are facile. Spam, telegraph operators ... It's the big media that arranges the generation of content. The foreign correspondents? The investigative journalists? The months spent on assignment abroad? The beat writers that follow a neighbourhood for years? If you think the echo chamber of inter-referencing bloggers will be a substitute, you've got another thing coming. Commenting on content is nice. Tagging it is great. Searching through it is wonderful. But someone's got to go and spent hundreds of hours on creating it first. And someone else has got to pay for it. At the moment, the guys who had the settled models in place are being driven out of business by outfits ultimately burning through venture capitalist money; eventually, they too will get around to charging for their services, and the era of "free" (i.e. subsidised) lunch will be over, but the damage will be done. Read up on what's happened to the staffs of LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, etc., count the Pulitzers those papers had won, and compare that to the output of even the most precocious blog.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Anonymous Coward]

Which communist country is this, again?

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[ohmpossum]

That is exactly what Apple TV (or even just iTunes) does. Saves a lot of time. There is no filter the ads just don't exist in the first place. Most TV shows aren't worth $2 a pop to watch but it is nice to have the option.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[Rich0]

Just to warn you - HD with Myth works fine, but make sure you do your homework. Even modern CPUs have a lot of difficulty with software rendering of HD, so you need to make sure whatever hardware you run can handle whatever you are throwing at it. Don't take an old desktop with an old graphics card and load it up with 3 high def tuners and a 5400 RPM hard drive with 256MB of RAM and expect it to record 3 HD streams and play one back at the same time, while commercial-flagging and transcoding 2 others.

The thing I like about Myth is that it scales. You can have 5 backends with 3 HD tuners each recording video and storing it on a SAN, and then have 10 front-ends hooked up to HD TVs across your mansion, and everything would work fine. You might need to carefully plan if you want to run a media server for a hotel or something, but you shouldn't have any issues with your house. You can also just run the whole thing on a single PC - possibly an older one if you're not doing HD. A common scenario would be a single backend with all the tuners and storage, and some small set-top boxes with either a network boot or a small flash drive for the OS/software.

Be kind, rewind...

[n3tcat]

... to 8 years ago when everything was free and there was no oversight on anything. Please? Pretty please?

Whatever, it's a great service

[gravos]

I for one am understanding of their need to generate revenue to maintain the excellent service. Especially they go to some of the background or portable options they've hinted at before, audio ads may be the only way to do that. I heard the McDonald's ad and considered it far less intrusive than the types of ads I get on other "free" Internet radio services. If they can design all their ads like that--NPR style, so to speak--and not make them constant interruptions to them music (start up and/or change of station are good ideas), then I say go for it. If that helps keep Pandora free and improving, I'm all for it.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[captainpanic]

Hmm... of course the station needs to get money from somewhere. I always thought that record companies pay stations to play their songs. Radio is the best add for a song (and music is a product that is advertised on radio). Why advertise anything else when radio is almost 100% advertisement? :D

I immediately admit that I am not aware of the business model of radio in 2009 (both internet or the good ol' fashioned one with photons hitting your antenna).

In the ideal case, the record company should be omitted. Bands who want to be known give their songs to a station which broadcasts it. Band becomes famous, and people pay for the concert. But then again, I also believe in Utopia :D

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[digitig]

Bands who want to be known give their songs to a station which broadcasts it. Band becomes famous, and people pay for the concert. But then again, I also believe in Utopia :D

That model does actually exist out there on the net -- the billboard at http://www.themusicwellhome.co.uk/ for instance.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[davester666]

> Hmm... of course the station needs to get money from somewhere. I always thought that record companies pay stations to play their songs. Radio is the best add for a song (and music is a product that is advertised on radio). Why advertise anything else when radio is almost 100% advertisement? :D

Um, it's kinda crazy, but this is known as "payola". It's not illegal for the labels to pay stations to play their songs, BUT the station has to disclose that they were paid to play the song.

Evidently, kids (who are the primary consumers of music) tend to tune out things they know are ads. So, the record labels have gone to extraordinary lengths (and have been caught MULTIPLE times) to pay radio stations to play their music WITHOUT saying they were paid to play it (easiest way to know a radio station was paid to play a song, the DJ will say it's the most requested song).

The labels are trying really hard to get radio stations to pay royalties, so they can get some of their payola money back...

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Nursie]

>Evidently, kids (who are the primary consumers of music) tend to tune out things they know are ads.

Actually, I think pretty much all of us that have grown up with pervasive advertising have an internal trip switch these days. It's a sad fact, but the way to keep sane in the modern (urban) environment is to selectively ignore most of the world around you.

Advertisers look for ever more invasive ways to get our attention, and then wonder why advertising has less and less effect. it's because we hate you and have learned to ignore you to the extent we don't even realise you're there half the time.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I have to get this off my chest.

1) It's AD, not ADD. FFS.

2) RADIOS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! That is to say, they don't use photons for any portion of their operation.

This message brought to you by your local science and english teachers.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[SockPuppet_9_5]

1: The commercials should be music based. "Lie To Me" does have that soundtrack for its commercials they've played on the FOX TV network. So this example fits.

2: The commercials should not repeat. If they do, they should not be identical in content. This is similar to running two different 15 second commercials on TV now.

3: Discretion is required. Commercials for Sham-Wow and their ilk are a deal breaker.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

YOU'RE GONNA LOVE MY NUTS!

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

Radio waves are photons! You need to get some better science teachers if they are not aware of wave-particle duality.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[captainpanic]

Thanks for the correction. It's a silly mistake.

Regarding point 2, the electromagnetic spectrum goes from Gamma rays, through X-rays, UV, visible light, IR, to radio waves. Those are all photons. And they're also all waves.

It's just that we like to think of radio as waves, and X-ray and gamma as particles. In the end, all of them are both: both wave and particle.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[ShieldW0lf]

Actually, I think pretty much all of us that have grown up with pervasive advertising have an internal trip switch these days. It's a sad fact, but the way to keep sane in the modern (urban) environment is to selectively ignore most of the world around you.

Advertisers look for ever more invasive ways to get our attention, and then wonder why advertising has less and less effect. it's because we hate you and have learned to ignore you to the extent we don't even realise you're there half the time.

You only believe that because they told you to. Advertisers fill your head with answers to questions you never asked, then when you are called on to make a decision and you're too lazy to do research or too tired to really think about what you want, you use the answers they gave you as your own.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Nursie]

You only believe that because they told you to. Advertisers fill your head with answers to questions you never asked then when you are called on to make a decision and you're too lazy to do research or too tired to really think about what you want, you use the answers they gave you as your own.

I don't believe that for a second. I'm the kinda guy that reads ingredients lists on everything from kitchen cleaners to pharmaceuticals. I am not under the control of advertisers or marketing fuckheads, thanks. If you are then I pity you.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

Radio waves are photons! You need to get some better science teachers if they are not aware of wave-particle duality.

No. Radio waves are waves. Wave's aren't photons. When those waves interact with certain types of matter, their energy exists in a discrete distribution. The quantization of that distribution is a proton.

You need a better math teacher, so they can actually teach you wave-particle duality.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[box4831]

I really can't believe they let that one slip into the commercial

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[EdwinBoyd]

"Next up we have the latest song from Rammstein, they're German so you know it's going to be good stuff"

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[ikkonoishi]

Yeah I now actually have to look to find ads on pages now days. Any ad that does catch my attention generally only does so by being super annoying with the flashing colors and vibrating messageboxes or the goddamn Intellitxt ones. (I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.) When that happens I immediately adblock the entire domain that provided that ad. I don't do that very often though.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[shark72]

"Hmm... of course the station needs to get money from somewhere. I always thought that record companies pay stations to play their songs."

I'm loving the fact that your post is 5, Informative.

By now it's been pointed out that it works the other way. Radio stations pay the rightsholders. In terrestrial radio, the songwriters and performers get most of the money (this is a good thing). The record companies, feeling left out, got the rules changed for Internet radio so that they get a sizeable piece of the pie.

You know how we're always saying that artists don't need record labels any more, and that they can Harness the Mighty Power of the Internet to get their music out? It's generally not as easy as most Slashdotters make it to be, but Pandora is one of those rare exceptions. It's a great equalizer -- if you're unsigned, and your music is good, Pandora will play it. You'll make some money, and you'll get exposure. I've discovered lots of artists on Pandora, and it makes no difference to me whether they're signed or not.

Now if Pandora worked the way you believe it to -- with money coming in from the record labels -- where would that leave the independent artists, the ones whom we claim no longer need the record labels?

"The labels are trying really hard to get radio stations to pay royalties, so they can get some of their payola money back..."

Webcasters have been paying royalties to the record labels for a couple of years now. The rates continue to go up, which is precisely why Pandora is experimenting with audio ads.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[kabocox]

Actually, I think pretty much all of us that have grown up with pervasive advertising have an internal trip switch these days. It's a sad fact, but the way to keep sane in the modern (urban) environment is to selectively ignore most of the world around you.

Advertisers look for ever more invasive ways to get our attention, and then wonder why advertising has less and less effect. it's because we hate you and have learned to ignore you to the extent we don't even realise you're there half the time.

Reminds me sort of at college to. I mean walk down any given hall way and you'd have all sorts of crap posted by various professor and such on each wall. Now the only board that we'd all stop and spend 30 seconds reading over was just a general post it board outside of the cross roads to several buildings. It was where students posted things like used books for sell or looking for a roommate or party at such and such. What format where they generally in? One sheet of paper with a single large header, 2-3 paragraphs stating what the heck it was about, then phone number/address/time ribbons along the bottom or around the entire edges for you to tear off and take the contact info with you.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Gulthek]

Hear hear!

I, for one, am throughly sick of the notion that all content on the Internet must be free as a matter of principle.

Things cost money, get over it. I'd rather give Pandora a few seconds of my listening time for ads than pay them a subscription. Although I'd seriously lean towards subscribing if they ever provide the option again.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[MadMidnightBomber]

RADIOS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! That is to say, they don't use photons for any portion of their operation.

That would be one of those special radios that you need to physically plug in to the sound source?

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

That may be true of many people, perhaps even most people. I'm pretty sure it's not true for me personally, though -- you know how I know?

I avoid advertising in ALL of its forms. I don't have cable television (I don't watch television programming at all, I only watch movies on DVD, and certain shows that I liked when I was a kid, also on DVD). I don't read magazines, or newspapers. I don't listen to broadcast radio. I get my news from the Internet, where I use pop-up blockers to avoid ever seeing the ads.

By avoiding television, radio, magazines and newspapers you avoid 90% of the advertising that would otherwise bombard your subconscious. The only ads I see are out on the street--those big billboards on the side of buses and businesses.

I hate advertising passionately. Its entire purpose is to make me want to buy stuff that I wouldn't otherwise want to buy. Advertising is insidious, persuading people to mindlessly consume all sorts of unnecessary crap. People wonder why their lives are unhappy, when they can't help but buy unnecessary junk and then feel let down when the unspoken promise of the Coke commercial with the hot bikini babe is not fulfilled ?

Thanks but no thanks. When I want to buy something, _I_ will search out the information I need to make a buying decision. I don't want to be spammed with it during every waking hour.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[OolimPhon]

Try finding out the difference between a photon and a proton. Neither of which are waves.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[ShieldW0lf]

I don't believe that for a second. I'm the kinda guy that reads ingredients lists on everything from kitchen cleaners to pharmaceuticals. I am not under the control of advertisers or marketing fuckheads, thanks. If you are then I pity you.

If you believe that, more power to you. But everyone gets tired, everyone has moments of vulnerability where they don't want to exercise diligence. If you haven't been exposed to advertising, you get a dull look on your face because you don't have an answer and you need one and you don't want to exercise the effort, but eventually you do because you have no other option. If you have been exposed to advertising, you take the easy out because it's there. It's just part of being human.

You think you're some highly intelligent person who isn't vulnerable to these effects, and that the advertisers are preying on the sheep, who are all much stupider and less sophisticated than you are. But you're mistaken. The people the advertisers are preying on are just like you, and you're just like them.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[thepotoo]

It is not possible that you haven't been influenced to some extent.

As the GP pointed out, advertising is more about brand awareness than anything else. You may think you're immune, and maybe on a conscious level you are, but somewhere they are most certainly making a difference.

Anecdote: I thought I was capable of ignoring advertising, too. I don't watch TV, I use adblock, and I don't read magazines. A few years ago, I used exclusively ATI cards. Nvidia wasn't even considered an option. I went to pick up a new video card at Newegg, and for whatever reason(!), decided to compare Nvidia cards. I found out that one of the Nvidia cards was actually slightly superior for the same price, and bought it (see, just like you, I try to read the packaging).

Two months later, as I was launching a game, the "Works best on Nvidia" logo played (just like it always does) and something clicked. That stupid 3 second clip that plays at startup of every game had turned an ATI fanboy into someone willing to buy an Nvidia card!

I now delete those startup clips (.bik file in the game's home directory, usually), but the point of this is that it's almost impossible to get away from advertisers.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

There's that annoying ad for some scam website that sounds like the DJ is just casually mentioning something he heard about. Trying to trick you in to thinking it's not an ad. Of course, no one listens to the DJ anyway unless he's saying the name of the last song or the upcoming one.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Nursie]

"If you haven't been exposed to advertising, you get a dull look on your face because you don't have an answer and you need one and you don't want to exercise the effort,"

Answers to what?

What exactly are we talking about here? the meaning of life? Which catfood to buy? (hint, the one the cat likes wins)

What?

Because to me advertising is pretty much just noise.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Nursie]

I'm not immune to brand awareness, you can't be these days, I just don't think they have any real impact.

I try not to be a fanboy of anything. I've had nVidia and ATI cards, both worked pretty well. I also like the intel card in my workstation because it's friendly to Linux, which I like because I don't have to pay for it and it does stuff I like...

I'm not totally free of ad influence, I'm sure, but I am oblivious to most of it.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Tanktalus]

If that's not evidence that advertising targetting the subconscious works, I don't know what is.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Hatta]

Which doesn't work if you purposefully ignore advertising, and purposefully avoid buying products with advertising you're unable to ignore. I won't say I'm immune, but practically immune. I buy what's cheap, not what I've seen advertised. If you want to manipulate me, you're going to have to do it with sales.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Nursie]

"If that's not evidence that advertising targetting the subconscious works, I don't know what is."

Or that advertising doesn't work, or that people are starting to get immune to it.

Evidence that advertising targetiing the subconscious works would require showing that it actually has an effect on top of not being noticed.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[billcopc]

The system you describe makes far too much sense, which is precisely why the record companies want no part of it. They do everything they can to suck money up, and everything they can to avoid paying money out. Whether your definition of "everything" includes legal abuse, tax fraud, racketeering, murder and extortion, well that's up to you.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[ShieldW0lf]

"If you haven't been exposed to advertising, you get a dull look on your face because you don't have an answer and you need one and you don't want to exercise the effort," Answers to what? What exactly are we talking about here? the meaning of life? Which catfood to buy? (hint, the one the cat likes wins) What? Because to me advertising is pretty much just noise.

We're talking about the cat food you grab off the shelf when you have no cat food at home, the one your cat likes is sold out, you don't know enough to tell the difference between the ones you see in front of you and you're late for supper so you grab the one with the logo you recognize because it's a symptom of the human condition that things that are familiar are deemed safer than things that are not familiar.

We're talking about making peoples decisions for them, so when they're psychologically vulnerable, as in the circumstances described above, they give themselves permission to not consider what they're doing before they do it.

Most purchases happen in this fashion, and the more people make decisions in this way, the more they train themselves not to be critical thinkers.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Hordeking]

Radio waves are photons! You need to get some better science teachers if they are not aware of wave-particle duality.

No they're not! They're Radons! Everyone knows that! It can't be a particle AND a wave! Think of the children!

Note: This message was paid for by the DNC, EPA, the Ad Council, society for really bad science, and Barack Obama approved this message.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Nursie]

Actually, I'm the kind of person that is most likely to grab the one I never heard of before in that situation. But then I am deliberately perverse wherever possible.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Nursie]

I also think that this is nothing like the initial point of my comment - that it is getting harder and harder for any advertiser to get their message across in the sea of advertising noise, and the sea of noise makes it easier to ignore.

Because there is SO damned much of it and most of it does not get through, in order to be heard you have to be both annoying and pervasive, which is not cheap and doesn't always produce a good result.

What's your argument? That regardless of exposure we're all like a blank page for advertisers to scrawl all over as much as they want because of their advanced psychological techniques?

I don't think so. I'll repeat, I barely notice ads these days, and the ones you can't help noticing because they are invasive ensure that I never buy that brand again.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[daedae]

That's pretty much the same though I have about Hulu, and for that matter reasonably-sized/-shaped non-popup ads on websites. Sure, tv shows on Hulu have commercial breaks in the same places as broadcast TV, but you only get at most 30 sec of advertising instead of a few minutes. If Pandora wants to break the music every 10 or 15 songs for a 15 or 30 second ad spot to stay on the air, go for it.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

We're talking about the cat food you grab off the shelf when you have no cat food at home, the one your cat likes is sold out, you don't know enough to tell the difference between the ones you see in front of you and you're late for supper so you grab the one with the logo you recognize because it's a symptom of the human condition that things that are familiar are deemed safer than things that are not familiar.

Maybe you do that, but I just buy the cheapest kind on the shelf. (Well, maybe not with cat food, because of the recent 'tainted food killing pets' thing, but everything else...)

(Posting AC because I already modded in this thread.)

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[neomunk]

I agree with you on this point, but I'd like to point out a couple of principles that can really help actively neutralize the effects of advertising.

Firstly, when the store is out of my preferred brand of $PRODUCT, I shop by desired ingredients, and then by price. Many times I buy store brand, unless I have previous knowledge of some deficiency in this particular store-brand product.

Secondly, when I shop, I actually bring the advertisements to mind, and do my (highly) cynical analysis on the advertising while I'm looking at the product in the relevant section of the store. This won't work for some people (especially people who secretly want to be 'cool', read: conforming to perceived societal expectations), but for others it can greatly mitigate the effects of advertising on purchase decisions.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what the little numbers after the $ are for.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[theaveng]

>>>I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out adds I'm not sure why you think you're entitled to get stuff for free. Maybe that's why they are calling people under age 30 the "Entitlement" Generation. I've always felt it's entirely fair that I either (a) pay dollars or (b) watch ads to support the musicians or actors/writers. Why the younger generation suddenly thinks musicians/actors/writers should not get paid strikes me as extremely odd. >>>of course the station needs to get money from somewhere. In both radio and television the station has bills to pay (about $4000 a month for the transmitter's electricity, plus labor costs), and they get that money from local advertisers. Without advertising my local WLAN-FM or WGAL-TV8 would have to declare bankruptcy since they'd have no more money. In fact several stations have down exactly that over the last month.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[theaveng]

Advertisers deliberately aim for 15-35 years olds, since they are more-easily swayed to try new products. Even amongst us older folks, those who are slow-witted probably just blindly go with the flow. Like my friend:

Friend: "Hey! Circuit City has 30% off on all laptops! Let's go get one."
Me: "But you have one."

"So? These are better. They come with the newest, bestest stuff like Vista."
Me: "I told you before; Vista is junk. And besides, you don't even use the laptop you have now! Looks it's all dusty; you don't need a new laptop."

"I don't care. The advertising tells me it will make me happy. I want one."
Me: "Yeah just like when you gave-up your $5 a month cellphone for a $50 a month cellphone. Is it better?"

"Ack. You just don't understand!"

.

Okay obviously I embellished a bit, but you get the idea. Advertising works, and that's why millions is spent on it. You and I might be immune, but the younger generation and/or the stupider folks are easily swayed. People like my friend who is deep in debt because he can't stop himself from listening to the ads.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[theaveng]

[fixed]

>>>I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out adds

I'm not sure why you think you're entitled to get stuff for free. Maybe that's why they are calling people under age 30 the "Entitlement" Generation. I've always felt it's entirely fair that I either (a) pay dollars or (b) watch ads to support the musicians or actors/writers. Why the younger generation suddenly thinks musicians/actors/writers should not get paid strikes me as extremely odd.

>>>of course the station needs to get money from somewhere.

In both radio and television the station has bills to pay (about $4000 a month for the transmitter's electricity, plus labor costs), and they get that money from local advertisers. Without advertising my local WLAN-FM or WGAL-TV8 would have to declare bankruptcy since they'd have no more money. In fact several stations have down exactly that over the last month.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[theaveng]

I just buy whatever's on sale, regardless of brand. If it's not on sale, I don't touch it.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Radio waves are waves. Wave's aren't photons. When those waves interact with certain types of matter, their energy exists in a discrete distribution. The quantization of that distribution is a proton.

"APOSTROPHES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!"

(Neither do protons!)

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't owned a TV in twenty years.
Mostly public radio (local college and WNYC).
Read the NYTimes daily.

So my paid advertisement realm is pretty narrow.

The only two brands of cat food that pop off my head are Iams and Science Diet, the only two sold at the local pet store. My cats will happily eat either, though one of the cats prefers raw poultry and raw hamburger over anything else.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Killer Orca]

You only believe that because they told you to. Advertisers fill your head with answers to questions you never asked, then when you are called on to make a decision and you're too lazy to do research or too tired to really think about what you want, you use the answers they gave you as your own.

What! Sears would never do that to me, or the Michelin Man! How dare you besmirch all the defenseless corporations that have to pay for their voice!

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

"We're talking about the cat food you grab off the shelf when you have no cat food at home, the one your cat likes is sold out, you don't know enough to tell the difference between the ones you see in front of you and you're late for supper so you grab the one with the logo you recognize ... Most purchases happen in this fashion"

I'm thankful that most of *my* purchases don't happen in that fashion.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Mr. No Skills]

I believe the problem with Payola (historically, although the "tuning out" may be a current issue) is that record labels essentially froze out smaller artists, since there's only so much air time. As a smaller artists (label or independent), you couldn't get your song on the radio without paying up, since the major promoter was already doing this. An extension of going after monopolistic practices, I guess.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[TaliesinWI]

We're talking about the cat food you grab off the shelf when you have no cat food at home, the one your cat likes is sold out, you don't know enough to tell the difference between the ones you see in front of you and you're late for supper so you grab the one with the logo you recognize because it's a symptom of the human condition that things that are familiar are deemed safer than things that are not familiar.

No, the whole "my pet died even though I fed it name brand food" thing kind of blew the lid off of quality=expensive. My cats get the store-brand cat food, and they love it. If they're out of that, I get the next stuff up on the price scale. Either you have a cat that will mow through anything you put in front of her (mine) or a cat that's so finicky that it's a coin flip no matter what you buy. Under those conditions why would you pay $5 a bag for Meow Mix knowing your cat might hate it and prefer $2.50 Alley Cat instead?

Now when presented with two or three choices and they're all the same or similar price you're going to go with the one you've heard of, that's true.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Golddess]

We're talking about the cat food you grab off the shelf when you have no cat food at home, the one your cat likes is sold out, you don't know enough to tell the difference between the ones you see in front of you and you're late for supper so you grab the one with the logo you recognize because it's a symptom of the human condition that things that are familiar are deemed safer than things that are not familiar.

Wrong. If it's sold out I go somewhere else, because I know that suddenly changing brands of cat food on my kitty can adversely effect her stomach. This from personal experience as well as other cat owners words and experiences. If you want to change brands, you do so gradually by mixing in the new food with the existing stock, until your cat is eating just the new food.

Now, I don't think I'm immune to advertising, but everything I can think of where advertising might have influenced me, it's very easy to spot other things that directed my choice. From beverages (I drink what tastes good to me), to medicine (I blame my parents on my initial choice, but since I've no reason to switch..), to cat food (again, it's what my parents feed their cats), to cars (once more, parents), I fail to be able to point out one preference and say "huh, I cannot say why I chose that".

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

labels are trying really hard to get stations to pay *more* royalties. At least in canada, they definitely pay existing royalties but when it comes time to re-negotiate the labels and radio stations get to agree on the value of a song

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[oneTheory]

Well most obviously, you use photons to make photon torpedoes. You can't use protons for that, duh.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[facelessnumber]

I'd rather give Pandora a few seconds of my listening time for ads than pay them a subscription.

And I'd rather give Pandora a few dollars of my paycheck than listen to their ads.

Maybe this "entitlement generation" people keep talking about is just weary of being pestered by constant advertising shitting on every second of their lives. I feel like I'm walking downtown and every block there's a hobo with his hand out who won't take no for an answer. When I'm listening to music- actually listening, not just hearing it for background, it's because I'm trying to turn my mind off and enjoy a precious few minutes of free time. Between responsibilities at work and at home, being on call, being dad to a two year old, these minutes I have, say when I'm driving alone or wasting time in the garage with music playing, or just staying up for half an hour after everyone goes to bed... These moments are near sacred to me, and to be interrupted by a stupid commercial for shit I don't care about is infuriating.

Pandora was the answer for me, but if they start advertising I'm going back to "stealing" mp3s.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

You think you're some highly intelligent person who isn't vulnerable to these effects, and that the advertisers are preying on the sheep, who are all much stupider and less sophisticated than you are. But you're mistaken.

That's what they told you to think, bub.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Hatta]

ut everyone gets tired, everyone has moments of vulnerability where they don't want to exercise diligence. If you haven't been exposed to advertising, you get a dull look on your face because you don't have an answer and you need one and you don't want to exercise the effort, but eventually you do because you have no other option. If you have been exposed to advertising, you take the easy out because it's there. It's just part of being human.

This is true. There are a few times when this happens. But they are vastly outnumbered by the times that I remember an advertisement, and buy the competing product for that reason.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[AuMatar]

Then they can charge for their service. I'd be quite willing to pay. But the first time I hear an ad on Pandora will be the last time I use their service.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[operagost]

I go for the stuff with > 30% protein so at least it's not all corn and silage. That being said, my cats preferred Fancy Feast even though some Purina high-end stuff has more protein and cats are supposed to be little predators.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[operagost]

Unless it's Star Wars.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like in college. There are a lot of girls everywhere but you just need to ignore the textures and avoid smashing into any moving objects.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

...but research by the advertising industry contradicts your statement. Advertising works and is effective whether you think it is or not. Just listening or watching is all that is needed, no matter what your attitude is.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[amohat]

Here is a service that is supposed to take what you like and suggest new and complimentary music in return.

Does the new ad system play new, relevant, non-repeating, targeted ads?

I will reject pandora until they make a ad system the serves up stuff that I might be actually interested in and maybe even buy at some point. For example, don't EVER show me a mcdonald's ad, for any reason, at any time. I promise that it's a waste of their advertising money. I would love to see the new G2 commercial though, and movie previews are worth sitting through the first time.

Hulu's ad system is horrible, and I won't use it as a result. I'd rather watch network tv commercials than the SAME mind-numbing ad 20 times in a row. Pandora will lose me, too, unless they spend some time making the ads as relevant as the product itself. (also the 6-time fast forward limit is retarded)

It cannot possibly be that hard to pull off. Shit, just ask me!

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

The people the advertisers are preying on are just like you, and you're just like them.

I'm with Nursie. The advertisers can prey on me all day, but their actions do not get the response they expect. If I want something, I seek it out. I resent being invaded when I am not seeking something out for purchase. And it is indeed stupid to spend your money when or because someone tells you to. For the most part, ads let me know what to avoid and which merchants not to support, because most ads are an insult and intrusive.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know I needed to buy cat food... maybe I better get a cat too.... oh yeah. I'm alergic.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Nursie]

Yeah, but they like a bit of fat and sugar as much as the next being.

better than the alternative

[wjh31]

isnt that invasive, on seeing 'invasive' i imagined comming in in the middle of a song, the title is poorly worded. Plus id much rather hear a few adverts than pay money, ideally neither, but if high royalties means one advert per ten songs (15s advert per 10 2.5min songs is only one 1% advert time) then id rather that than have it disapear.

However, If its the same advert over and over, that will get tedious, ive played a few free versions of games that have been ad sponsored, and to have the same advert over and over is just annoying.

Re:better than the alternative

[wjh31]

ey

if they let through enough adds to be comparable to commercial radio, then they will lose one of their attractions, and people will move onto competition, or back to commercial radio

being realistic, would you honestly rather loose pandora/lastfm/yourinternetradioofchoice rather than hear some adverts, if they are in a scenario that they arnt making enough money, and the choices are ads, fees, or closing, id choose ads every time

Re:better than the alternative

[wjh31]

that 'ey' was meant to have a strikethrough

Re:better than the alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ads", it's "ads" ffs - short for advertisments.

Re:better than the alternative

[Darundal]

I wouldn't move back to radio even if Pandora had ads as frequently as them. Normal radio doesn't offer me personalized stations of music that aren't dreck. With radio I end up listening to 3-5 songs I don't like before hearing one I do, and that is if I find a good station.

Re:better than the alternative

[DreamsAreOkToo]

I listen to Pandora. It's the same Advert over and over, but it's very short and only comes up once an hour.

My problem is the "landslide effect" or better known as "Just Barely Noticeable." (JBN) that marketers pay LOTS for. Basically, they keep edging in bit by bit until your high quality service is junk, and you've never noticed the change. (An example is, the divet in the bottom of peanut butter is now deeper than it used to be, effectively reducing the amount of peanut butter you buy, making the company MILLIONS)

Soon, Pandora will be no better than the radio stations you listen to on the air. But, I imagine that's EXACTLY what the RIAA wants.

They will be replaced...

[Joce640k]

The Internet shaped them, the Internet can break them. Look at what happened to Napster.

Re:They will be replaced...

[thermian]

What, so internet only media companies shouldn't be allowed to make a profit? Seriously?

You need to revise your ideas I think. If all you want is good quality free services that don't advertise, you're going to have to do them yourself, because no-one else will.
Companies that don't make a profit become one of two things, dead companies, or slowly degrading services that then get bought by larger companies.
If the latter its rare that the original appeal survives the process.
Twitter is a good example. They have no advertising, make no profits from their customers, and have millions of users. How long do you think Twitters going to last in its current form? I'd give it less than a year.

Re:They will be replaced...

[Thaelon]

There's no "should" to it. People are always going to try and get as much as they can for as little as they can. The opposing force is that businesses are trying to get as much money as possible for as little expense as possible. And given the internet, people are going to find ways to get free, or nearly free digital content. They're going to take pay to play content and distribute it in free fashions. They're going to take advertisement laden content and strip out the ads. These are both inevitable.

What content businesses need to do is find a way, given these two facts to continually produce new content that people will pay for. Basically, continual high quality is the easiest, cheapest, and best way to do this. Take Techdirt for example. They deliberately syndicate their articles are syndicated on their RSS feed because they know if they're good, people will visit the site anyway. Whereas foolhardy businesses like members of the *AA try to maintain a monopoly on an intangible easily copied product. An exercise in futility.

Re:They will be replaced...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Valleywag, Facebook loses over 10 million a month, and Slashdot's competitor Digg is rumored to lose about 5 million a month. I wouldn't be surprised that advertising heavy Myspace isn't breaking even with their music streaming service.

There seems to be this stigma that the internet companies can deliver content cheaper than anywhere else and so they have to offer limited advertising or ad-free services for 5 bucks. The computer revolution happened because people were willing to shell out 5 grand for a metal box.

I'm pretty sure this web revolution is scared to death of profitability in a market already exposed to Napster, Limewire, and Bittorrent.

History repeats itself

[El_Muerte_TDS]

'But [Pandora's] founder promised the site will never carry as many audio ads as broadcast radio, despite the fact it pays substantially higher royalty fees to the recording industry.'

Same old half-truth. 1 second less is still "never as much as".

I'd settle for commercials...

[liegeofmelkor]

if that's what it takes to finally come up with the funding to appease European rights holders. I loved Pandora in the States, but I've had to cut back since there is no legal way to get Pandora in Germany (I'm assuming proxies to mask country of origin for the purpose of accessing region-restricted media is a legal grey area I shouldn't get into at work).

Re:I'd settle for commercials...

[icebraining]

Many people run Tor, which has many exit nodes in the US, and I haven't heard of any legal troubles.

Re:Can't be accessed outside of US

[wjh31]

Its not really pandoras fault in this case, if you go to their home page.

"We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative."

plus there are plenty of alternatives that do work, i use lastfm in the uk, works ace

*Sigh* I hate advertising

[rolfwind]

Another service to stop using. I'd rather pay/subscribe than listen to ads (not that the same promise didn't stop ads on cable tv). Not even regular radio interrupts songs in the middle, although a lot of obnoxiously talk into the beginning or cut off the end with their chatter. And replacing Satellite Radio with an iPhone/data_contract + Pandora seemed like a decent idea a while back.

What is it with advertising becoming so pervasive the last 50+ years that it actually ruins the medium it trojan horses itself in to the audience? On TV, the channels seem to enjoy ruining their shows with invasive in-show advertising for other crappy shows on the same channel. I cancelled my premium subscription when those sets of channels insisted on ruining all their shows, like a subtitled movie by covering the subtitles at the worst points with in-show ads. I know this is a reaction to TIVOing, but really, even with a DVR I usually just recorded something and forgot to skip ads half the time. I'd buy the DVD of that subtitled movie mentioned, but then I am forced to watch previews to "coming soon" movies that are long since gone from the theaters. Pirates are better off.

Since I was a teenager, I stopped buying branded shirts, as I refused to pay to be a walking billboard for some corp. It's weird how that became popular. And it's strange that the internet is one of the few mostly ad-free places left if the user chooses (adblock, noscript, etc) yet I bought more based on word-of-mouth there than any actual advertisement in the real world. Just seems like a giant waste of $$$ to be honest.

Hell, look at Geico commercials, at least they at least try to be entertaining. Maybe more advertising to follow the same route, becoming patrons of specific songs/etc (like in the middle ages) and actually add to the mediums rather than sabotaging them.

Hulu does this and everybody doesn't mind that...

[Vertana]

Seriously, this is no big deal. According to the article, "On average, people will hear a 15-second commercial about every two hours, Westergren said, adding that it is a targeted ad campaign and not everyone is hearing the commercials." Other 'free' services have been doing it for ages, most notably Hulu.com. Plus I agree with the above comments... fuck country-specific services on the Internet and fuck those royalty fees. And yes... I'm looking at you the most RIAA...

Music is being advertised on radio

[captainpanic]

Why advertise anything else?
People hear music, like it, buy the CD or visit the concert.

Re:Can't be accessed outside of US

[sunami88]

So They're still US-only eh?. I thought Pandora died a slow and painful death around third quarter last year some time after they decided to ignore the rest of the world...

Guess not, though them being US-only, they might as well be. Too bad, I remember enjoying it.

Truly the American dream

[Sobrique]

Truly the American dream. Yet another service that includes propaganda to convince you to buy more stuff that you don't need.

Re:Truly the American dream

[ettlz]

So don't buy it.

Re:Truly the American dream

[drsquare]

That would be taking responsibility. Instead blame the corporations and the government black helicopters for forcing you to buy things you might actually want and derive pleasure from.

Re:Truly the American dream

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertisement != propaganda

Once upon a time, children....

[macraig]

Let me tell you a fictional bedtime story, kids. Once upon a time there were these cable TV services that were popular because they had no commercials! Then, like an evil virus, commercials started slowly creeping in, so slowly people didn't notice the prick of the blade at first....

Re:Once upon a time, children....

[characterZer0]

And the people who subscribed to cable because it was ad-free did not immediately call the cable company and cancel their service because of the ads.

Re:Once upon a time, children....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is a component of the "we've got to make more than we did last year" syndrome when it comes to cable companies. And the same logic will eventually apply to every type of media for as long as people will tolerate it. When I started using the web in 1996-97 it had little to no ads on every page, now everyone tolerates huge intrusive ads on most pages. With flash video players web advertising for people without adblock is getting to the point of being as irritating as any other type of media. Now I understand that you have to have a way to pay for the media, but companies like XM radio and Comcast cable are already pay services, so they increase advertising to simply increase profit without having to find more customers, ramp down their salaries, innovating or making their business practices more efficient. They'll just slap another 20 minutes of commercials into the 30 minute show because you'll keeps subscribing anyway.

That's why I don't even bother with XM radio, I see where they're headed. That's also why buying a season DVD of a show is becoming a more viable alternative to a cable subscription. They'll give you great selection and no commercials to sell you in, then once they have you they'll start twisting the knife...

Re:Once upon a time, children....

[macraig]

No doubt some observant customers actually did do that, but we don't hear about them, because the vast majority of The Herd didn't. The cable companies understood more about human psychology than their customers did. The customers got played. Happens all the time.

This is one example why "focus groups" and psychologists in the employ of Big Business scare the crap out of me. What pushable buttons will they uncover next, in Hari Seldon fashion?

Re:Once upon a time, children....

[floodo1]

This is a perfect example of markets working poorly. Your response presupposes that the customers actually represent their best interests. Problem is that, for a variety of factors, consumers DON'T represent their own interest and the markets become skewed. I see this happen most frequently when the good/service being sold is something that people do not want to live without, or it becomes part of a larger product.

I'm sure with cable TV it went like this:
Wow, I can pay and have no commercials!
Wait what? You're adding commercials?? Nooo!! But I'll keep buying because I can't live without the extra channels that you offer.

The larger product that the cable companies offered masked the consumer interest to not see ads.

Headline over the top

[bytesex]

These commercial breaks are not 'invasive'. Somebody groping you on the street on your way to work is invasive. You can still choose not to listen to web radio.

Re:Headline over the top

[iamdrscience]

I agree, but that means the real question is, can I get ad-free radio just for letting somebody grope me? If so, sign me up, it sounds like a win-win.

Re:Headline over the top

[Tom]

It sounds as if they were, in the sense of not only interrupting the regular program, but actually songs right in the middle.

I'd call that "invasive". It would make me change station.

Re:Headline over the top

[SydShamino]

These commercial breaks are not 'invasive'. Somebody groping you on the street on your way to work is invasive. You can still choose not to listen to web radio.

I disagree completely. As I sit here at work listening to music, wearing a pair of headphones, I hear the music inside my head, roughly centered between my ears. Having an advertisement unexpected appear in my cranium is intensely invasive, far more so than if it was on a radio in my car or a TV in the room corner that I easily recognize as somewhere not inside my body.

Re:Hulu does this and everybody doesn't mind that.

[iamdrscience]

Other 'free' services have been doing it for ages, most notably Hulu.com

I know this is the internet we're talking about, but Hulu went live ~1.5 years ago and has only been accessible to the general public for less than a year (March 12, 2008). They haven't been doing anything "for ages".

Pandora will be why

[Anonymous Coward]

last.fm flourishes

Re:Pandora will be why

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

I still don't see how CBS can make any money out of them, though.

Re:Can't be accessed outside of US

[Anonymous Coward]

The rest of the world has been giving a big "fuck you" to america for more than a decade.

America has been giving a big 'fuck you' to the rest of the world for over a century.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[drinkypoo]

The fundamental problem with all of this is that Pandora is advertising. The Music Labels get a service which is not super-trivial for you to download music from (by no means impossible) so that you can sample their music - since Pandora won't just let you listen to it how you want when you want, you may be compelled to buy it. Now they want to add commercials for shit I'm not listening to as well? If companies want to advertise to me on Pandora they can pay to have their songs ranked up, so that I hear them more. Instead, I have to say goodbye to Pandora at a time when I'm considering actually having enough bandwidth to use it. But since there are many non-commercial internet radio options, I guess I'll use one of those instead. Station ID bumpers are annoying enough when I'm in a groove, commercials are simply unacceptable to me. (I'm one of those annoying "I don't watch TV" fucks, but even when I did, I muted all commercials.)

Re:Hulu does this and everybody doesn't mind that.

[Vertana]

I know this is the internet we're talking about, but Hulu went live ~1.5 years ago and has only been accessible to the general public for less than a year (March 12, 2008). They haven't been doing anything "for ages".

Fair enough, I just chose a website that does this and is widely used by the general public.

Spotify does this too.

[Skrynkelberg]

It plays an add every ten songs or so. For me, it is no big deal, but in case you should think so, there is also an add-free subscription option for 99 SEK ($12) a month.

Re:Spotify does this too.

[ciderVisor]

Spotify is the dog's bollox, even in its free version. I've been sending out invites to all my friends and family. Unfortunately, the licensing conditions means it won't work in the States. I don't find the occasional ad too annoying given that every track I request is one that I WANT to hear and not some radio station's concept of what I should be listening to.

Oh, and I'm happy to pay the BBC license fee for ad-free OTA broadcasting.

Re:Spotify does this too.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bollocks" is a word of Anglo-Saxon origin, meaning "testicles". . . .the word also figures in idiomatic phrases such as "the dog's bollocks" and "top bollock(s)", which usually refer to something which is admired, approved of or well-respected.

So wait, that you admire Spotify just like you admire a dog's balls? English idioms re fun, but I'm not using that one. No thanks.

Re:Hulu does this and everybody doesn't mind that.

[TuaAmin13]

Still, I would like to have a variety of advertisers.
You watch a show on a network streaming station and you get 1 ad over and over (whoever the sponsor of the day is). I've watched stuff on Hulu and had an identical commercial for 4 breaks during a show. No I don't want to see how Best Buy made someone's Christmas. Give me a mix so I can't memorize the commercial's lines.

Pandora is a great service. I've only recently jumped on the wagon, but I would definitely not mind a few ads to support it.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[pr0nbot]

Radio and TV are more about delivering you to the advertisers (i.e. making money to keep going) than delivering content to you. It's a balancing act, so you'll likely end up at the point of diminishing returns, i.e. the point where the monetary benefit of more advertising divided by the number of listeners stops rising and starts falling.

That's OK

[rrohbeck]

They get their ad revenue for sending them, not for you listening.
Filtering them out can't be too hard and won't cost them. Just like AdBlock downloads the ads but doesn't display them.

Re:That's OK

[xorsyst]

AdBlock downloads the ads? Gah, what a huge waste of bandwidth that is when you're on dialup and paying per minute. Surely this should be configurable?

Re:That's OK

[Tx]

AdBlock downloads the ads? Gah, what a huge waste of bandwidth that is when you're on dialup and paying per minute. Surely this should be configurable?

It is.

Re:That's OK

[icebraining]

Adblock Plus: Save your time and traffic

Nop, they really block it from the HTML source, so the browser doesn't even try to download it. Maybe they could modify it so the browser asks for the file (marking it as a "view" for the advertiser) but stops the connection before the download begins?

On the other hand, I don't use AdBlock, so I don't really care. Blocking flash ads is enough for me.

Re:That's OK

[SydShamino]

But sites can tell when you don't download the ads, and chose to not display the content. I remember something like this coming up a year or two ago here on slashdot.

So yes, OP, you can chose to not download them, but then you might not get the part you wanted to download, either. It might be better to let the site and the advertiser think you saw the ad, then you wink and know better.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[rolfwind]

You're absolutely correct. This actually applies to lesser degrees to terrestial radio and satellite radio. Except that terrestial radio plays only the top 10/40 at any given time, which for pop is fine since it's always new crap every so often, but for anythng remotely older or niche - it becomes a repetitive cycle to an audience who has heard it for years already and since they will undoubtedly hear it again have little incentive to go and buy it anyway. Sattelite is a bit better as far as exposing the audience to something new, however it can't beat the Buy it now option of Pandora (Itunes, Amazon).

Again, it's the industry greed that drove up the royalty fees, but it always seems the advertiser ends up ruining medium they try to convey their message in.

Re:Hulu does this and everybody doesn't mind that.

[Anonymous Coward]

On average, people will hear a 15-second commercial about every two hours

If you believe that then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Sure, it'll start that way so they're not, technically, lying but then they'll boil the frog.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[bishiraver]

If companies want to advertise to me on Pandora they can pay to have their songs ranked up, so that I hear them more.

I really hope this never happens. I listen to pandora to find music that I like, not what the record execs want me to like.

(And yes, I use it as a music discovery service. I've bought about two albums a month from pandora's amazon affiliate link.

Have you done your part to help keep them alive?)

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[rolfwind]

That explains why you're a slashdot subscriber, as denoted by the asterisk by your username. You've posted about 150 comments, you obviously don't hate the place.

Oh wait, there's no asterisk by your username.

Google indicates my post count is about 1,700 comments although it's probably be higher. I think signed up before subscriptions (~1999) but am not entirely sure. Alway's been using no scipt and adblock since they've been available, not specifically for this site. I'm just not up-to-date on the site's features/developments actually, so I don't know what the subscription is supposed to buy me, sorry. Looking at the subscriptions page, it has a page count rather than a time length....

Conversely, I do buy flash games or donate to certain flash projects and support a few websites.

It's not that I harbor an illusion that people are altruistic and projects will get as much funding as with advertising (PBS's constant pleading is testament to this and little better than intrusive adverts), but there is a correct way and an incorrect way to do things. Modern mainstream advertising stopped riding the coattails of the content that brings the audience and just actively subverts it - Television's new intrusive techniques was an example although I'm not entirely sure if that is also some type of way to prevent people from recording a perfect example of a movie they want rather than getting it on DVD. Another example would be those magazines that were once useful but then became so overrun by ads they easily outnumbered the content - and a magazine is bought and paid for. It's also brings to mind the law of declining returns - all those ads are fighting among themselves to be noticed - which is probably why Geico does the shtick it does.

As for Internet advertising - if the website stuck to a simple advert jpeg/gif or even flash file coming from its own servers and inserted them as static content to the page, along with a link to the sponsor - it would be less of a problem and hard to block anyway coming in.

The NERVE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

When will these swine learn that we don't need no stinkin interruptions !! Transcoded 256 kbps from 112 kbps mp3 all the way !! And crank it up !! Turn up the Veeeeez !! I hear one commecial and back to Virin radio I go !! The whole point of internet radio is that it is free !! Free !! FREE !!

Re:The NERVE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

When will these swine learn that we don't need no stinkin interruptions !! Transcoded 256 kbps from 112 kbps mp3 all the way !! And crank it up !! Turn up the Veeeeez !! I hear one commecial and back to Virin radio I go !! The whole point of internet radio is that it is free !! Free !! FREE !!

Check your medication. Seriously.

Pandora Still Worth Your TIme

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate ads as much as the next guy, but I think being able to actively choose what is on my radio, is pretty much worth a 15 seconds ad. Especially if it is 15 seconds over a 2 hour period of music I love.

And, as stated above, it's intrusive in a minimal sense.

Pandora: What's that?

[GuerreroDelInterfaz]

A US-only thingy it seems. I wanted to suscribe but that's not allowed to us who live outside the frontiers of the Empire. So I had to "choose" LastFM.

Thus I don't think advertisement would be a bad thing if it allowed access to all of us non-USAmericans. And if it doesn't, it's an US-only issue.

--
El Guerrero del Interfaz

Re:Pandora: What's that?

[afidel]

You act like it was Pandora's fault they had to close off non-US access. In reality it was the media cartels greed combined with the fact that many other countries don't have statutory rates for internet broadcasting yet.

Re:Pandora: What's that?

[GuerreroDelInterfaz]

You act like it was Pandora's fault they had to close off non-US access.

You've got the wrong impression, buddy. The only thing I'm criticizing mildly here, and not even directly, is the tendency to look at the web as an US-only affair. I'm definitively pro-globalization. And in the case of Internet radio there are alternatives. So if Pandora, who was clearly my first choice, is not available, I choose something else. I will certainly not sit down and whine or wait for them to fix their problems... That's capitalism...

In reality it was the media cartels greed combined with the fact that many other countries don't have statutory rates for Internet broadcasting yet.

I know that the cartels are the ones who are fucking up everything around, even their own business. But that's their problem, they are shooting themselves in the foot. Or more exactly killing themselves. Their problem and I will be happy when they finally finish themselves up.

You missed the point of my post which is that, for us non-USAmericans, advertisement on Pandora is not a bad thing as it could allow us to access it. And, if not, it does not concern us.

--
EL Guerrero del Interfaz

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know the record execs don't already do this? The fact that you are listening to music you like doesn't mean that the labels aren't paying Pandora to have their tunes played with a higher probability within a certain niche/genre.

Radio

[Threni]

It wouldn't be radio if it didn't have stupid adverts. I'm sure there'll be some dick spouting off shit next, competitions etc.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[iamhigh]

becoming patrons of specific songs/etc

You don't remember the Pepsi "Monk" song (Artist was Sev)? I am pretty sure there was a similar ad out at that time (several years ago). I remember reading a story that perhaps a new future was for products to support up and coming artist in exchange for them in the ads, making quasi-jingles, and what not.

But I haven't really seen much "product support of up and coming artist" (aside from soundtracks). Guess it didn't work out too well.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Another service to stop using. I'd rather pay/subscribe than listen to ads (not that the same promise didn't stop ads on cable tv).

Did this "promise" ever exist? I don't remember any cable company making such a promise, nor have I found evidence that they did. I think it's one of those urban legends that belongs on Snopes.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[bishiraver]

Because that's called payola, and the station is legally required to disclose when they're being paid to play a song.

What I'm wondering is why Pandora hasn't set up a market research account so that record companies can gather pretty lucrative information on demographics for their music. Information that's more in-depth than radio listener counts. Information that could be anonymous: "Last month you had 602 listeners in the New York Metro area listening to Band X. This month you have 800, but Band Y has dropped in popularity.

Put in some awesome google analytics style output, and you've got a pretty useful app that companies would pay hand over fist for.

I'd think record companies would pay good money for this kind of market research, so they could help bands plan tours that would draw higher attendance - and possibly choose a venue: sometimes the anticipated attendance from market research is much lower than the actual attendance - so they book a large venue, but only fill it with a medium amount of people. This has the result of — no matter how good the band was — giving an appearance of being lackluster.

Example from another industry:

You have a restaurant. Your food is great. Everyone who eats there loves it. Unfortunately, because of the town you live in, not many people go out to eat. The business is still profitable, but the restaurant looks empty. People passing by and glancing in the windows might notice this, and come away with the impression that your restaurant has lousy food or service - and then they put it off their list of things to try. Often this is subconscious, but it's there.

Blame The Major Labels...

[BlueStrat]

Blame the major recording labels and their bought-and-paid-for congress-critters. This is purely the result of the major content producers'/distributors' attempts to kill off internet radio because they don't control it. This isn't about copyright, royalties, or any of that noise. It's about controlling distribution and what people see/hear. If they can't control it, they'll try everything they can to kill it.

Also, expect many countries outside the US to eventually follow along as treaties are signed to "harmonize" IP laws.

I'm afraid this whole thing (the attempts by the major content distributors to outlaw/regulate/legislate the way the internet works) is going to get really ugly before it's over.

Cheers!

Strat

Re:Blame The Major Labels...

[TheoMurpse]

bought-and-paid-for congress-critters

This is a very ugly English phrase that I can only figure out Cory Doctorow introduced into the internexicon via BB.

Everytime I hear it, I cringe. I really wish people would stop using "congress critter." I mean, in the US, critters are good things like bunnies and cute animals! It's an overwrought phrase.

No offense intended. There are just some phrases that really irk me, and "congress critter" and "more carrot less stick" both do.

Balls in a vice

[superbus1929]

They have no choice. The industry put them into such a wringer that they have no choice but to find some way to generate revenue. It sucks, but the only way to get rid of ads is to put so much pressure on the board that decides the royalties that they almost have no choice but to drop the fees, but that's not going to happen; if this ensures Pandora's survival, I'm sure they'll find another way to try to kill Pandora.

The RIAA wants nothing less than 100% control over every distribution outlet for their controlled music, and the destruction of anything they don't control, be it artists or distribution outlets. It's as simple as that. To fight that kind of junta... I'll listen to a few ads.

Re:Can't be accessed outside of US

[MoOsEb0y]

1. ssh -D 8080 host.in.the.us
2. set ff proxy to localhost:8080
3. ????
4. profit!

Letter to Tim Westergren

[KurtisKiesel]

Dear Tim Westergren and Pandora Staff, I have been listening to Pandora for well almost 2 years now. I have introduced all my friends to it, and many use it. Sometimes I have had to defend your product as the superior way to listen to music and introduce new artists and music into your life. I have generally been very happy with Pandora and the experience of being a 10 hour a day listener of Pandora at my office. Last night however I experienced something that I will say was an absolute shame. When I arrived at home from work my wife was listening to her Pandora âquick mixâ(TM), I could tell because of the diversity of the station she was listening too, when an advertisement played over the digital air ways. I asked out loud. âoeIs that an advertisement on Pandora?â to which my wife responded, âoePandora has been playing those for a while now.â I feel robbed! I have several times checked out the visual advertisements on your pages, I listen to Pandora in Google Chrome just so I can see and click on the advertisements that are otherwise blocked in my Firefox browser. I have bought music through / because of Pandora. Right now I am seriously re-thinking that. You have to have competitors out there who donâ(TM)t play advertisements. Some of my friends have mentioned them before, maybe it is time I do some new research on them. From what I understand you only have chosen to homogenize a certain set of users, I donâ(TM)t know why you have not chosen to attack me with audio pollution in between songs. But when you do I will stop listening to Pandora Radio. Right now introducing anyone else to Pandora is on hold in my book. Frankly if my wife keeps getting advertisements I am going to try to convince her to stop listening as well. I need to go apologize to many of my friends who I told them Pandora was the listeners dream. -Kurtis Kiesel Pandora User since 02/09/07 http://www.pandora.com/people/kieselk

Re:Can't be accessed outside of US

[cthulu_mt]

And that's the only reason I still pay my taxes.

And they still wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

why people prefer to pirate songs. Sheesh.

Sorry Pandora, it's been fun

[rAiNsT0rm]

I have been using Pandora for years and have found a few new artists by using it, and I know they have struggled to make a profit, but this is the end for me. Besides the ads they have also shortened the time you can just listen tremendously now stopping the music and popping up the "Are you still listening?" dialog every 5 minutes.

Pandora is a company/project that could be profitable in so many creative ways but the asshats behind it seem to only know intrusive ads in one way or another. It is a classic case of tunnel vision and a complete lack of creativity and effort.

I plan on emailing them my thoughts before just disappearing, and I'd urge anyone who uses it to do the same.

Re:Sorry Pandora, it's been fun

[aegis17]

Why the indignant rage over a free, amazing service? I've only heard one ad over the course of ~10 hours listening, and while the "are you still listening?" dialog is rather annoying, it is trivial compared to what I receive from them. If you truly dislike what they have become, why not try donating and getting a premium account? They don't offer ads, and the dialog pops up once every five hours, rather than every half hour.

On second thought, everyone should donate; that's the only way to get around the ads. After all, they exist so the company can stay afloat, while handing out free music to anyone who cares and is willing to be inconvenienced for five seconds of every half hour. By leaving them, you force them to find new ways to generate revenue, which results in more ad time, etc.

I plan on donating to them for listening, and I'd urge anyone who uses it to do the same.

Re:Sorry Pandora, it's been fun

[rAiNsT0rm]

No, you are missing the point. Ads and donation are not the only way to generate revenue from a project like this. Pandora needs creativity, not donations. They are not just providing you and me a service, they are getting new artists heard, they have the ability to place songs, they have tons of options available yet they fail to act on anything beyond a tired ass system of ads or donations.

Say, Kanye West has a new album coming out. They go to the record company and strike a deal to have a track from the new album pop up in any related stations for X amount of days leading up to the release for Y dollars. That is just one example of hundreds I could easily think of, I have no interest of giving Pandora any donations because it is just like an able-bodied person asking for a handout. They *CAN* generate the revenue, they just don't.

I have worked in the music industry and I can get everything I get from Pandora elsewhere with less hassle, I have stayed with them because they have a novel idea that I think could be a great bridge between the old and the new. They are slowly burning their own bridge.

Re:Sorry Pandora, it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using Pandora for years and have found a few new artists by using it, and I know they have struggled to make a profit, but this is the end for me. Besides the ads they have also shortened the time you can just listen tremendously now stopping the music and popping up the "Are you still listening?" dialog every 5 minutes.

Pandora is a company/project that could be profitable in so many creative ways but the asshats behind it seem to only know intrusive ads in one way or another. It is a classic case of tunnel vision and a complete lack of creativity and effort.

I plan on emailing them my thoughts before just disappearing, and I'd urge anyone who uses it to do the same.

You know what? Go fuck yourself.

Did you pay a dime for their awesome service? It's obvious that you never did -- so feel free to fuck right off.

When the FCC came to bend Pandora over, who stood behind them to help them with their business? None of you freetard booger-eating losers, that's for goddamned sure.

Everybody wants something for nothing, and when they get it, they still bitch because the nothing isn't on their terms.

You piece of shit.

Re:Sorry Pandora, it's been fun

[DaTroof]

You suggest that Pandora devise a more creative source of revenue as if it's a completely trivial thing to do. If it were that easy, content providers would never resort to advertising at all. They don't do it to be evil. Some advertising is unscrupulous, but there's nothing meretricious about the concept of advertising itself.

Incidentally, your Kanye West example is known in the radio industry as payola. It's a reviled practice. Pandora is against it. You might want to share one of your other hundreds of examples if you really want advertising to disappear.

Re:Sorry Pandora, it's been fun

[rAiNsT0rm]

No, that is not payola.

"Under US law, 47 U.S.C. Â 317, a radio station can play a specific song in exchange for money, but this must be disclosed on the air as being sponsored airtime, and that play of the song should not be counted as a "regular airplay.""

I never said they would have to play it secretively. Just as they have huge ads on the side of the site, or sponsored "stations" like for Scion, etc. They could in your rotation state: "And up next is an unreleased track from Kanye West's upcoming album hitting stores on such and such a date" but let people still thumb up/down it or even skip it as with any music.

It's better than listening to an ad for some product or unrelated B.S.

Thanks for trying to give me a lesson though, I have done promotion so yes, I have thought up a ton of solutions because this is not the first time Pandora has been grasping at straws trying to stay afloat. So can Pandora. The people behind it, not the service or idea are flawed.

Re:Sorry Pandora, it's been fun

[floodo1]

You assume that someone on the production side wants to pay them for placement on their service.

Maybe this is 1) against the spirit of pandora & 2) is not something that the recording industry is interested in.

To me the great thing about Pandora is that they bring me music that I've never heard before. Now if Kanye gets to pay them to have his track show up in one of my rap stations, I've lost the ability to (potentially) find a new artist during that time.

Idk why you think the recording industry would be willing to finance Pandora (whole or in part) for placement like this.

Re:Sorry Pandora, it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Attitudes like this really confuse me. Is listening to 15 seconds of ads every 30-60 minutes really ruining the entire service for you?

Yes, excessively long ad breaks or excessively annoying ads will make me stop watching/listening to any service, but this is neither.

And also, the idle time for pandora is one (1) hour. Not sure how you managed to twist that down to 5 minutes, but I think I can manage moving the mouse in that window once every 60 minutes.

Re:Sorry Pandora, it's been fun

[DaTroof]

Sure, they can work around the legal definition of payola. It doesn't change the fact that some people will find it just as vile as you find advertising. And as someone else mentioned, it's questionable whether record labels would be willing to pay for the service, or if it would generate sufficient revenue for Pandora.

What are your other solutions?

So?

[Accursed]

It's their service, and they need to recoup costs for their bandwidth somehow. Really, this whole "ads are bad, everything should be free and beautiful" thing is getting old. Reality doesn't work like that.

I Subscribed

[imag0]

I Subscribed to Pandora a while back and it was worth every penny.

If you're listening free, then realize that it has to be subsidized by someone. That means ads.

Do yourself a favor. Subscribe. It's really worth the money. Probably the best 36 bucks I've spent this year.

Imag0

Re:I Subscribed

[gdek]

Me too. Worth every penny.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[cjb-nc]

Another service to stop using. I'd rather pay/subscribe than listen to ads (not that the same promise didn't stop ads on cable tv). Not even regular radio interrupts songs in the middle, although a lot of obnoxiously talk into the beginning or cut off the end with their chatter. And replacing Satellite Radio with an iPhone/data_contract + Pandora seemed like a decent idea a while back.

Ok, so what's stopping you? I pay $36/year for ad-free Pandora. You can too. Beats the heck out of my XM subscription in the car, which has ads on an awful lot of its channels in spite of the promises otherwise.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

As for Internet advertising - if the website stuck to a simple advert jpeg/gif or even flash file coming from its own servers and inserted them as static content to the page, along with a link to the sponsor - it would be less of a problem and hard to block anyway coming in.

As an admin of a local media website... Some of our advertisers require that we simply serve tags and not host the file ourselves. It's only leaderboard and skyscraper, nothing intrusive or crazy. If you want those ad dollars, sometimes you have to give in to the nationwide ad agencies and their requirements.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[afidel]

Pandora can provide better stats then what you show, that's the same kind of thing they get from Nielson and company today. Pandora could actually tell them that people with profile properties x,y,z voted songs a,b,c up and songs q,r,s down and were likely to skip songs l,m,n during this time of day. The detailed information they could gather could really help them with both singles selection and with time of day rotation for terrestrial radio.

Wrong competitor.

[Explodicle]

the site will never carry as many audio ads as broadcast radio...

Too bad they aren't competing with broadcast radio - they are competing with last.fm, which has no ads.

Proof?

[Nithron]

I'm genuinely curious about this - is there actually any compelling evidence that trying to target your customer's subconscious actually works?

People seem to take it for granted that it does, but I've never seen anyone actually prove it.

If only they would turn *down* the volume...

[mckyj57]

My big complaint about ads is their overmodulation and intrusiveness. I would much more willingly submit to ads if stations would commit to turning down the volume, perhaps half what the music is.

Instead, I just don't watch television or listen to radio. I simply cannot stand constant advertising.

at least we don't have to listen to

[McBeer]

You're listening to 107.329847 papapapAAAAAAAAANNNNNNDDDOOOOORRRAAAA the best/freshest/greatest music in the [insert geographic region]. Now we will assault your ears with 30 5-second clips of the the most overplayed/overmixed songs on the radio!

every other song.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[Red Flayer]

Another example would be those magazines that were once useful but then became so overrun by ads they easily outnumbered the content - and a magazine is bought and paid for.

Are you familiar with the financial models of magazine publishers? Subscription fees don't even come close to covering production expenses. You can claim a magazine is bought and paid for, but you are paying a *heavily* advertising-subsidized price. Smaller magazines (especially trade pubs) derive most of their revenue from subscriptions, but this is not so for large circulation books.

The reason I bring this up is that the same is true for lots of media types. For Pandora, they simply can't cover expenses from their current subscription fees. They could play with the fees (e.g., increase the price, reduce services for non-subscribers to increase demand for subscriptions, etc), but I'm guessing modeling would show that to do so would not be enough. They may be at a good price point, and increasing the price might result in fewer subscribers and potentially LESS revenue. Reducing services for non-subscribers might alienate a lot of potential subscribers, which is a big mistake.

So what is their best way of increasing revenues? Seems to me advertising may be their best choice.

I'd also point out that ads are being served to only a subset of their users. Maybe it's based on demographics, maybe only non-subscribers are being served ads. I don't know.

What I'd like to see is tiered subscription levels, so that every user is generating enough revenue to cover the cost of serving that user. I think this could help Pandora stay in business, while allowing those who don't want ads to do so. And the nice thing is, it keeps people who don't view ads from freeloading off those who do (which is the current problem wrt adblock and tech sites (such as slashdot) with ad-based revenue models).

"Gold" members pay a fee large enough to account for the fact that they receive their music ad-free.
"Silver" members pay a small fee to put a cap on ads served (say, 2 minutes per hour).
"Brown" members pay nothing, but have uncapped advertising levels. Pandora will need to figure out the optimal mix of music/advertising to keep their user base high, but still generate sufficient revenue.

In short, TINSTAAFL. Pandora can raise revenues or go out of business... hopefully they will choose a revenue model that will still allow users to have the choice of receiving ad-free music.

I would pay for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

As Pandora is now, I would $36/year for it

To have unlimited skipping, I would pay $8/month or $80/year.

I say this only after having installed the Pandora iPhone app, which I use for a majority of my music listening now.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[stubob]

But advertising is only a short-term fix. Why doesn't Pandora partner with Amazon and offer one-click purchase of CDs or mp3s, then split the profits with the RIAA?

The RIAA gets their cut of the actual transaction, Pandora makes some money, we all get to buy the music we want. Wait, that makes way more sense than trying to get blood from a stone.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Hulu does this and everybody doesn't mind that.

[thesolo]

The major issue I have with Hulu, South Park Studios, and this in Pandora, is not the existence of the ads themselves, but rather how the ads are presented in relation to the program.

I'm more than willing to accept the fact that to subsidize royalties, bandwidth, etc., we may have to hear/see an advert every so often. Fine, no problem. But for fuck's sake, can you at least NORMALIZE the blasted thing first?!

People don't like sudden, unexpectedly loud noises. If you're not going to normalize your ads to match the volume of the surrounding shows, then you're going to turn people off. My experience with Pandora's ads thus far haven't been good, considerably louder than the music before or after. I'm wearing in-ear headphones, it hurts when that happens.

At home, I'll be watching something on Hulu through Boxee on my AppleTV, I have the volume all set for the episode I'm watching, and then an advert comes on at literally twice the volume of the TV show, and now I'm diving for the remote control to hit the mute button because a sonic boom was just created in my living room.

South Park Studios is particularly bad about this, their ads for GT4 or whatever racing game are so loud and obnoxious that I now instinctively mute my TV the second its time for a commercial break. I'm not watching or listening to the ad now, because their volume control (or lack thereof) has turned me off for good to their ad stream.

Back in the early days of Firefox, when it was still Phoenix/Firebird, the first plugin I ever installed was "Nuke Flash", a handy little thing that removed a flash object from the page. Why did I do this? Because some cock got it in their head that a banner advert should play MUSIC or obnoxiously loud sound effects when you accidentally mouse over it! And if someone sends me to a website that starts talking/playing music the second I arrive, I'm never going back there again.

So fine, if you must have ads in Pandora/Hulu, etc., please make them so it doesn't sound like Al Pacino is yelling into my ears with a bullhorn. Thanks.

Premium Service

[armitage787]

If this goes through they will prob have a premium service that you have to pay for that will be ad free.

commercials are always annoying

[garylian]

Why is this surprising to anyone?

Back in the 1950's the first 1hr broadcast of a television show started, with the Milton Berle Show. And there was only 1 commercial break, at the half-hour point. And funny things happened.

In his autobiography, Berle said that in the city of Detroit, he was so popular that the city had no water pressure from 9PM to 9:05PM, due to all the toilets being flushed at the same time.

Well, this led to a little innovation by those that make commercials, and it still happens to this day: Commercials are much louder than the regular broadcast. So folks could hear in the bathroom, and over the toilet's flushing.

Just give me a chip in my TV that regulates the sound to a maximum decibel level when I change the volume, so the commercials are no louder than the program.

Re:commercials are always annoying

[TheoMurpse]

That would be nice, but it can be done already. Hell, it might even be possible with the wonderfully hacker-friendly Linksys NSLU2 (the "slug").

Get a USB audio-in and a USB audio-out device (can you get them on the same device?) and flash the NSLU2 with OpenWRT. Surely you can write a very simple program to run on OpenWRT (a Linux) that you can feed a maximum decibel or you can feed it a sample of a program.

This sample would provide an "average", from which perhaps only permit variance of a certain magnitude from the average. Some simple math. Anything beyond, say, a standard deviation from the mean would be filtered down to the maximum permitted (or even muted!).

Run the audio from your devices audio-out to the slug, run the soft, then run the slug's audio-out to your speakers or whatever. This, of course, is not a solution if you use your TV's speakers.

I'm sure someone else can fill in the conceptual gaps. Get on it, OpenWRT coders! ;)

Think Advertising is Evil? Start a Business!

[Udigs]

Reading some of the posts in here, you get the impression that people think that advertising is the most subversive thing in their lives, next to maybe imaginary mind control from the government...

Look, I used to feel this way about advertising. I did. I thought it was evil, perverse, and damn near solely responsible for the decline of civilization... Until... I started my own business. And guess what? I think about advertising in a *whole* new way. It's not evil. It's a necessity of modern life.

Also, I see a lot of this "advertisers are telling you what to think," "planting answers in your head," etc etc etc. Don't give them too much credit. In working with various largeish ad agencies I've learned that they don't know a hellva lot more about all this than we do. They are flakey communication majors who like to get knackered on long island ice teas after work... They don't have the slightest clue how to achieve these "sinister" ambitions. What they do understand is how to communicate the message of a product or company to people that might be receptive to it. That's about it.

Pandora is a wonderful service and I respect their right to want to support themselves and their company with their efforts.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

Music companies can't pay to have their music played more. There are old payola laws in the way.

RAISE YOUR SUBSCRIPTION PRICES, DUMBASSES.

[Anonymous Coward]

$30/year is not a reasonable price to pay for the service Pandora delivers, and I don't understand why they don't see that. There is literally room to raise prices by 5x before most of their users will complain or abandon them. That would get the royalty organizations off their back, enable expansion of the business and profitability for the VCs, *and* eliminate the need for commercials.

Does anyone know why their subscriptions are so underpriced?

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[CodeBuster]

I'd buy the DVD of that subtitled movie mentioned, but then I am forced to watch previews to "coming soon" movies that are long since gone from the theaters.

You might want to give DVD Shrink a try. I agree with you that the movie studios and other content owners should drop all of the extra "junk" from their DVDs and give the previews a rest. We do not care about your coming attractions (from last year) or other crappy me-too movies that were produced by your third party no-name production company. The only people who care about production company names and the like are people in the industry and even then they will look up your movies on IMDB pro. It makes one want to Netflix their films, rip em, and shrink em them instead of buying them with all of the added junk. When the pirated product is better, then they know that they (the studios) have a problem. Disney is among the worst offenders in this regard. I cannot tell you how many happy friends I have with kids how are now using ripped and shrunk copies of those Disney films (which their kids invariably destroy given enough time) while keeping the originals in a safe place.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[RyoShin]

Another service to stop using. I'd rather pay/subscribe than listen to ads

Good, because Pandora has an ad-free, paid subscription service. Please put your money where your mouth is, then, and sign up for it.

Honestly, Slashdot is full of crybabies. Everyone would love to not deal with advertising, sure; but this is a free service, and it doesn't run on rainbows and unicorn farts. They can either be subscriber-only, or they can have a free version with a few hitches.

Plus, I don't see anyone talking about how this is actually an improvement to the free version (or at least none modded to +4). And it is! Previously, every dozen songs or so the player would just stop completely, and you'd have to click a little button saying "Yeah, I'm still here and listening". I didn't blame them for that, because they do have to pay for every song they play (not to mention related service fees), and so this helped to make sure someone didn't start it in the morning and then go to work.* However, it was still annoying because I would have to break my train of thought to realize the music had stopped completely (and it wasn't just a song that started soft) and switch over to turn it back on.

As I listened yesterday, I didn't have to do that a single time. I heard the ads, sure, but they merely interrupted the music briefly, not stopped it. Also, Pandora has music ads that would play whenever you switch stations (sometimes including a video that covered the player) which I found far more annoying.

Furthermore, these aren't invasive in any sense of the word. Unless you consider normal television or radio ads as "invasive". Which they're not.

For fucks sake, Slashdot, you're getting as bad as Fox News now.

* I should mention that it was every ten songs or so if you didn't do anything within the player, like rating a song. So if you rated every fifth song or so, you never had that. The caveat is that every first action you take after X minutes causes an ad change, though I don't mind that, either.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[floodo1]

Since I was a teenager, I stopped buying branded shirts, as I refused to pay to be a walking billboard for some corp

D00d, some of us CHOOSE to be "walking billboards" in order to help the companies whose clothing we are wearing. Some brands come with the quality, and I enjoy repping their gear. Granted, none are "some corp's", but the point remains that not all advertising is bad.

The shirt I wear IS word of mouth. Ask me about it and I'll highly recommend it.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[floodo1]

If companies want to advertise to me on Pandora they can pay to have their songs ranked up, so that I hear them more

This is the LAST thing that I would like to see. I hate most "ads" so I do as much as possible to avoid them, but the great thing about Pandora is all the new stuff it exposes me to.

I certainly don't want that exposure to be diminished because someone payed to have their song played. This exposure is the key to their product for me. I like to put in someone that I know and get someone that I've never heard of. Chances are if I've never heard of them they probably dont have enough money to pay Pandora to play their songs more.

Vans were certainly possible - and trivial.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

From what I've heard the detector vans were an urban myth.

While I can't state authoritatively whether the vans were a myth, the technology was real. Also simple and cheap.

Television and radio receivers of the era were all superheterodyne - down-converting a signal to a low and standard "intermediate frequency" ("IF"), where a fix-tuned amplifier/filter combination did most of the boosting and rejection of out-of-band signals before the detector stage. (Fixed-tuned filters are easier than variable-tuned and filter selectivity is in terms of a percentage of center frequency so lower frequencies are easier to band-pass filter than higher.)

The down-conversion was done by "mixing" (multiplying, or using other non-linear approximations) the incoming signal with a sine wave at a frequency from a "local oscillator" ("LO"), displaced from the signal of interest by the IF frequency. (Yes I know "IF frequency" is redundant.)

This "mixer" stage is preceded by a small number (one or two) of variable-tuned amplifier stages - which reject the other "image" (incoming signals on the "other side" of the local oscillator frequency) and to provide SOME attenuation of the local oscillator energy in the mixer as it "leaks" toward the antenna. The isolation is enough to keep the local oscillator frequency from radiating enough energy (through the antenna or out through the box or other wiring) to jam other channels - but far too little to keep it from being trivially detectable by a radio tuned to (or sweeping across) its frequency.

So it's trivial to put a "panoramic" (sweeping) receiver in a van, with a directional antenna on the roof, and hunt down the local oscillator radiation of any receiver that is operating and tuned to a BBC channel.

This technology predates the TV tax. It was used in WWII (at least by the Germans and probably by the British as well) to hunt down receivers tuned to the enemy's news outlets (which carried embedded messages to embedded spies) and "numbers stations" (which carried encrypted messages ditto).

They do now us a database to work out who hasn't bought a license, and then knock on the door now and again to check up on you.

Much simpler in an era of cheap computing and document copying. But more intrusive. Detection is STILL possible and cheap. So I'd be surprised if they knocked on the door before checking to see if there was a receiver running.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[rgamage]

Another service to stop using. I'd rather pay/subscribe than listen to ads

In that case I would suggest paying for Pandora, and you won't get the ads. It's definitely a service worth paying for - they've introduced me to countless bands and songs I never knew existed. I heard an NPR interview with the founder, and it's really amazing the amount of work that goes into profiling each and every song. I can't believe it's been free for so long, especially the way they get screwed by the royalty fees and legal limitations. I really hope the public in general doesn't respond as you have - "Ads? OMG, Run away!!"

No complaints

[forpeterssake]

I've been listening to Pandora all day with only a handful of ads. So far it seems like a fine trade-off, and I definitely don't mind supporting a great service like Pandora. I also appreciate that the ads aren't too invasive or lengthy.

Re:Hulu does this and everybody doesn't mind that.

[TheoMurpse]

Tell me about it. I never blocked ads on Slashdot until about a week ago, when I finally got fed up with this pattern:

1. Click some hidden comment
2. Read
3. Click "reply to this"
4. type some long comment
5. open new tabs to find sources for my assertions
6. come back to comment
7. click in textbox to add some HTML
8. somehow get forwarded to another website because Slashdot's screwy new flash-ad system dynamically loads new ads when you view hidden comments occasionally
9. go back to previous page
10. page has been contracted back to the original form, without hidden comments expanded
11. lost my long comment

So, Slashdot, I block your ads now. I didn't want to. But you screwed up royally.

And to point a couple things out, these ads are all invisible (so I don't see them), and the last one to get me sent me to Think Geek.

Ignore this

[Mozk]

Replying to myself.

Re:*Sigh* I hate advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

Another service to stop using. I'd rather pay/subscribe than listen to ads

So do it. $36/yr ad-free subscription.

Me = Validated

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew there was some undiscovered reason why I shied away from internet radio when everyone around me sang its praises. Now that they are using ads, and especially ones in the middle of a song, I never have to consider the question again. The answer is no, never.