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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.'"
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
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.
The Internet shaped them, the Internet can break them. Look at what happened to Napster.
No sig today...
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
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....
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.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
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".
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.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
>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.
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.
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.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
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.
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.