Pandora One

Pandora One

Before we get into it.  Let me be clear about myself.  I do not work for Pandora, I am a subscriber to their service and nothing more.  There are some things that I like and some that I didn’t like.  Please don’t think I’m some secret viral marketing blogger for said company/service.  I’m not, and I despise that sort of thing.  Who I am is a different topic that can be found elsewhere on my site.

When I was first introduced to Pandora by a co worker of mine, something caught my attention about Pandora and the Music Genome Project.  It wasn’t like iTunes where it was one giant sales pitch to sell you something or a online store.  Kind of like what Gmail is to Yahoo! Mail.  Gmail is a free web mail service.  So is Yahoo! Mail, however there is more crap to wade through to get to your Yahoo! Mail.  But once again, another story for another time!  It was a fairly intelligent and easy way to listen to music and the best part of all find new music.  All you had to do was give it something to start with and it did the rest from there.  A simple thumbs up or thumbs down and the occasional cranking the volume up was all you had to do.

So in short here are the things that I like about Pandora. I’ll get into the details following the short list.

  • *Free
  • Simple and Intuitive
  • Somewhat intelligent
  • Easy discovery of new music
  • Website isn’t an ode to their overlord advertisers
  • Great quality stream
  • Mobile support

Things I don’t like about Pandora

  • New music discovery plateau’s
  • Lack of skinning and mod support
  • Website is resource hungry
  • Some menu options leave you wanting more functionality/detail
  • Website is a bit convoluted and things are not easy to find sometimes

ITS *FREE!

Wait, there’s a catch here.  But its by no means a deal breaker.  Notice I put a “*” next to free.  Just like anything else on the internet, things are very rarely just “free”.  They are almost always “*free”.  There are ads on their homepage.  But like earlier in the comparison I made between Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, they both have advertising yes.  But one of the two has a substantial influx of advertisements and distractions versus the other.  Luckily Pandora is not flooded with these.  But keep in mind, that is how they make their money to deliver such a service.  I am not against advertising on your web site. I will one day have advertisements on my site as well.  However I am against websites that go overboard with advertising.  And in this case, Pandora is well within their means.  Of course if you subscribe to the Pandora | One service these web ad’s disappear and do not come back unless you are not logged into your account.

Simple and Intuitive

In comparison to some of its competitors, Pandora has this on lock.  When you go to their page, or open their “One” player.  It plays music!  Try loading up Last.FM or iTunes.  You will be instantly hit with several different distractions.  Now don’t get me wrong.  Both of these other services have their purposes.  But in this sense, Pandora is the productivity master.  I like to work with music playing, and I could never help myself with anything other than Winamp from just fooling around with iTunes or Last.FM’s grab bag of features.  (A.D.D. is a lifestyle!)   When I say the word intuitive to describe Pandora.  I mean it in the exact definition, “automatic, without requiring conscious thought; easily understood or grasped by intuition“.  And I loved it like that.  Easy, clean and effective.  They stuck to the basics and followed that stupid little acronym that we hear all the time.  “K.I.S.S”  Keep it simple stupid!  Stupid acronym yes, however it is very true no matter how you look at it. Even to this day a visit to their website at pandora.com will show you that they still follow this concept.

Somewhat Intelligent/Easy Discovery

The new music discovery aspect of the service is surprisingly good.  But if you’ve been paying attention to what you’ve been reading I kind of listed it in the pro’s and the con’s.   I’ll get to the con’s of it in a bit, but for now the good points.  When you first start using Pandora you’ll punch in one of your favorite song’s and you’ll notice right away it will begin to play other bands and songs that you like.   Pandora uses around 400 different musical attributes to decipher your musical taste depending on the bands or songs that you give it.  Then from those 400 attributes they combine into around 2000 focus traits to find other similar music that you will also like.  In my experience with the service so far, it is pretty damn accurate to my tastes.  And best of all it does all this very easily.  First by giving it some music to start from and  then by rating what it comes up with via a simple “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”.

Website Advertising

I touched on this a bit already.  And there’s not much to say here other than the advertising isn’t very intrusive to the point of it getting in the way of using the service.  And of course, if you subscribe it goes away.

Stream Quality

Even with their free service the streaming quality isn’t bad at all.  Most people are not and will never listen to music on their computer with any sort of sound system that would allow them to be able to tell the difference between good and bad stream quality.  But either way, Pandora doesn’t really slack off here.  The quality is great.  And also with the pay service you do get the option to increase the quality of the stream.  Which I do use, as I am a bit of an audiophile.  I have several pairs of headphones well over 200 dollars a pair (no, not Bose crap).  And back in 2000 I sprung the 500 dollars for my Klipsch Promedia 4.1 speakers which I still have and use to this day.

Mobile Support

The ability to take pandora with you on the go is a very cool thing.  Unfortunately my cellphone isn’t supported.  (Thanks alot Verizon)  But for those who can, I envy you.

Music Discovery Plateau’s

After a while you will begin to notice that the music discovery seems to level off and stop trying.  It will begin to simply play the songs that you gave a thumbs up and doesn’t try to search for anything new from what you gave it.  Now I understand there is only so much music out there.  And granted there is quite a bit.  However I would expect from a “smart” music player like Pandora, would be to continuously trying new stuff.  Even if it’s not at the same rate that it was when you first created the radio station.  Unfortunately it does plateau.  And nothing short of adding new stations will remedy this.  I also do not know if this is a limitation set by Pandora, maybe the record companies for all I know.  It is even possible the music I listen to only have so many options and based on my input it has exhausted it’s resources.

Lack of Skinning / Mod Support

I am an avid Mozilla FireFox user and what I like the most about it is the ability to leave it as is, or to mod it to the point where it functions exactly how I want it to.  I believe all software should have these abilities to some extent.  I hate the fact that I cannot use my keyboard function keys to control the app, similar to how I can use them with WinAmp or other media players.  At this point I have not come across anything to do this, however the internet is a big place that is always changing.  I just haven’t found anything yet.  There is also the fact that Pandora | One is only version 1.0 .  It is still a baby by internet standards.  Hopefully one day this will change.

Website is Resource Hungry

If you use the player directly off of their web page you’ll notice that it seems to eat up memory with no remorse.  I do not use the web browser player much at all anymore since I subscribed to Pandora | One.  But it is still an issue.  Not everybody has a lean, mean computer like I do.  Most people’s computers are filled with junk software their vendor dumped on them. And more commonly people have unknowingly infected their computers with spy/adware/viruses that are already eating up all of their system resources.  Some might argue that computer’s these days are already packed with so much memory and processing power that it is a non issue.  I disagree with that all together,  Just because computers have more power these days is no excuse for writing bad software.  I will also admit Pandora isn’t horrible about this sort of thing, but it is not good either.

Menu & Website / Functionality

Both a blessing and a curse.  In a never ending quest to keep the website slim and lightweight the website is a bit convoluted.  I feel that the website is a bit hard to navigate even as simple as it is. Wait…. What?  With how little they have on the site, things are a bit hard to find.  They are not exactly where you would expect them to be.  It’s just not as “useful” as it is functional.  There seems to be some effort to implement some social features into the site.  Overall they are here and there.  Kind of like MySpace.  and their completely unorganized feature set.  Although not that bad, its just what it reminds me of.  This I will also admit is a very difficult thing to do for any company.  So once again hopefully this will get better as time goes on.

So to conclude my review, there are good and bad.  But like anything else out there it has great potential.  Even with the downfalls I am still an avid user/subscriber to their pay service.  And in comparison to the other media services it fits my needs as a listener.  I don’t use iTunes because I believe their prices are still expensive.  But that is also not completely their fault, as with other online music stores.   I am a big fan of applications and services that do a limited set of things and do it well.  And yet I do want more out of it.  I know that sounds hypocritical.  But nothing is ever perfect right?  But I still love it.

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