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

[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.

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: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: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.