Why iTunes Radio Could Take Down Pandora

cagraham writes "Pandora has been the standard for internet radio since it launched in 2000, and just announced the appointment of new CEO Brian McAndrews. They claim they're not worried about Apple, but iTunes' massive user base (575 million), content deals, and cheaper pricing options should give them legitimate reason for concern. Can Pandora survive iTunes Radio? Do a-la-carte options like Spotify make any internet radio service irrelevant?"

Comments

Wouldn't call it a standard...

[theotago]

Cannot use Pandora in the UK and haven't heard any friends using it in Europe, so I wouldn't call it a standard.

Re:Wouldn't call it a standard...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can include Canada in that list. I'm 90% sure it's US only.

Re:Wouldn't call it a standard...

[theotago]

True! From their restricted 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., Australia and New Zealand"

Re:Wouldn't call it a standard...

[ArcadeMan]

iTunes is available in Canada.
Pandora is not available in Canada.

Therefore, I must conclude that Pandora does not exists.

Re:Wouldn't call it a standard...

[TheRealMindChild]

Pandora is my only "radio" the same way Netflix is my only "TV programming". It has an app for all of my smart appliances and it does a really good job of figuring out what I want. I don't know what I would do without it.

Re:Wouldn't call it a standard...

[stoploss]

what's the fourth amendment exclusion perimeter? I thought at first you meant the US borders (no 4th amendment allowed within), but that would be like 8,000 miles

Customs and Border Patrol have declared that their jurisdiction extends to within 100 miles of any border of the US.

Probably is some sort of mumble, mumble...Interstate Commerce!mumble mumble interpretation of the Constitution or something else that is intellectually dishonest and prima facie farcical, yet has been upheld by our perfidious judiciary as Constitutional.

It's shit like this that makes me wish we didn't have a written Constitution. The goddamn politicians were always going to do whatever they wanted, regardless of what any document says. At least if you don't have a written Constitution they don't look you in the eye and swear that growing chicken feed on your own land and feeding it to your own chickens is interstate commerce. Or that the Founders meant for border security to be able to turn the preponderance of the country into a police state. Or that simply existing is a legitimate rationale for levying a tax. Or that ex post facto regulations don't count as laws, even though you must abide by them or face punishment. Or that according to the 4th amendment it is fine for the federal government to track all mail forever, all phone calls forever, etc, etc.

It's the fucking hypocrisy that gets to me. I'm counting the years until I can get out.

iTunes Bloat

[MrDoh!]

If it's something that doesn't reduce the machine to a crawl, maybe it'll have a chance. I want a small player, maybe even a plugin to winamp, that once authenticated, just plays in the background. Use a webpage to manage playlists if need be.
Anything but the monstrosity of iTunes.

Isn't Apple the minority platform?

[RichMeatyTaste]

Pandora and Spotify work on every platform... yet iWhatever only works on one that has a very small share of the total mobile market. I think they can survive just fine if they are selling something people want.

Re:Isn't Apple the minority platform?

[VortexCortex]

It is not enough to merely sell what people want; In order to survive one must also sell enough of what people want to bring the cost of creating that which they want down enough to yield profit in so doing.

In that respect, given your small market share statement, then the headlines should be: Will iTunes Radio survive against the likes of Pandora and Spotify and and SkyDrive and Google Drive and streaming to your devices from your personal cloud at home... Not to mention the increasing popularity of copyright free music such as found on streaming services like Jamendo and Magnatune, or my favorite: Rainwave.cc video game music remixes. And then there's the elephant in the room that isn't classified as a radio station, but serves as one to some: Youtube.

iTunes Radio doesn't have ANY of my favorite bands, who all give me music for free (CC), and who I support directly with donations and cut out the publisher middle man.

I make games, and host gamedev jams where we crank out some fun little games over a few days... I'm making plans for the XY-mas Jam (2D Christmas themed gamejam) and need to get some music to play while hacking on games. Turns out, iTunes doesn't have an assortment of video-game themed Christmas music. Know who does? OCRemix, down loadable for free, streaming on Rainwave.cc, or posted on Youtube.

Youtube's the thing to watch here. They've got the OCRemix of that Mario Sleighbell Jazz Christmas Music, and the London Phil Harmonic playing an Orchestral Ode to Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as just about every other song you want to listen to, and you can put them in play-lists and share them with friends... Ask a teen what "streaming" music service they listen to. I've found a surprising number just use Youtube.

Re:Isn't Apple the minority platform?

[jrumney]

I suspect iTunes Radio will be available for every market where there's a local iTunes music store.

I don't know why you would suspect that. Apple has no record of consistency in offering all their services to all markets. They need to negotiate the same licenses with the same companies that Pandora and Spotify do, and they will hit the same obstacles that have held them back.

There is no standard.

[astro]

I find the summary nearly trollish. There is no standard bearer in internet radio, and if there were, I don't think Pandora would be it. Yes, lots of people use Pandora. Lots also use Last.fm, and/or listen to the tens of thousands of independent internet radio stations out there - many of which are actually, I believe, much more in the spirit of "radio" than automated algorithmic music-recommendation services like Pandora and Last.

I say these indie stations (House of Sound is one that I co-founded, and I currently DJ at Radio 23 - there are thousands of others) are more in the spirit of radio, because they actually have live DJs, "spinning" (sometimes literally) records, mp3s, YouTubes, even cassettes, on a constant basis. These "stations" are interactive to a degree that music recommendation services are not - they are inflected by the taste of the DJ, many have live-chat or call-in features, and they are in real time.

My conclusion is that neither Pandora nor Last.fm are actually "radio" at all. Pandora recommends music to a listener based on pseudo-scientific analysis of what a person listens to (key, tempo, tone, volume, etc.) and Last uses the Amazon social model (x people who listened to y track also listened to z). I find, personally, Last's social model to be more effective for me than Pandora's algorithmic approach. Neither are radio. Radio, to me, whether based on radio waves or not, is a real person exposing their tastes, quirks, personality and even mistakes.

Re:There is no standard.

[_KiTA_]

A major problem with Pandora is you never hear, in theory, anything you dislike -- but also never hear anything NEW, you MIGHT like, either.

I remember about a year, maybe two, ago there was discussion about Google and Bing and the like "censoring" your search results -- tailoring them to news sources and (this is the big one) ideologies that it thought you were a part of, due to their data mining.

This created a minor bubble, a lesser kind of the bubble you see Fox News (or god forbid, Infowars) followers stuck in. This is a disaster in the making when dealing with news, but it's also pretty darned bad when talking about entertainment.

For example, I use Pandora for stand up comedy. I have a station for each comedian, and the new shuffle thing at least mixes things up. But I never hear comedians other than the X number of stations I have +/- a few more, give or take a rare playing of some odd or new comedian.

Contrast this with playing a comedy radio station, an actual radio station, one where the music is all set by a DJ or a "impartial" randomization routine. Will I hear stuff I dislike? Probably. Will I hear new stuff I wouldn't have heard on Pandora? Absolutely.

I don't know how to fix that particular problem. Maybe Pandora should allow for an option where for an hour a day, or at random, it goes into "Pandora Power Hour" where it loosens up the algorithms and intentionally makes you listen to things you might not have known you liked? Not sure.

Re:Lost time

[Anonymous Coward]

Why loose time on useless time wasting speculation ?

Slashvertisements are not useless time wasting speculation. They are productive platform agnostic information resources that help produce civil, reasonable and equally valuable discussions between like-minded individuals in a public forum.

the problem with iTunes Radio is iTunes

[lophophore]

iTunes was good 6 major releases ago: iTunes 4. Every release since then has gotten slower and more bloated than the last. Yecch.

This is the uphill battle Apple faces: the client is a pig.

A lightweight client (ala Google Music) has a much greater chance for success.

It's all about the lock in...

[plazman30]

Well, since iTunes Radio only works on Apple Devices, and Pandora works everywhere, I would not be too worried.

Re:It's all about the lock in...

[Mr_Silver]

Well, since iTunes Radio only works on Apple Devices, and Pandora works everywhere, I would not be too worried.

Given that the "everywhere" support that Pandora has is actually restricted to only three countries - if iTunes Radio works on all Apple devices worldwide, I would be worried.

A query

[Pop69]

Just out of interest.

Isn't using your monopoly in one area (online music sales) to leverage your entry into another market (online radio) the definition of abuse of monopoly ?

Re: Streamtuner

[larry bagina]

$25/year

Re: Streamtuner

[MightyYar]

No. It won't sync audio, so if you have two zones in audible range (say "living room" and "kitchen") you will hear a very annoying echo between them. Sonos gets this right and Airplay (mostly) gets it right. The open-source Airplay clone Shairport doesn't quite have it right, but you can screw with the buffer until it is good enough. Allplay does it in theory, but I don't have any devices (or music players) to test it.