Pandora and my Continued Adoration...
Heh. That was me - all starry-eyed and excited about meeting Tim at Pandora...the heart and soul behind only the GREATEST ONLINE THING EVAR! I remember being so very excited to meet him. I dragged poor Munjal along and told him repeatedly how he should be just like Tim. Don't get me wrong, Munjal rocks...but there are very few people in the world that can be Tim.
I remembered why tonight when I sat with hundreds of people at the Yerba Buena Center, listening to Tim Westergren talk about Pandora's story and where they are going. Man, I forgot what a truly inspirational story this is.
A group of people, dedicated to the Music Genome Project, spend years at their labor of love - not making money (Tim said, "Being a musician was my 'stable job'."), getting evicted, scraping a company together to keep the dream alive. I'm sure it was less romantic than it sounds, but dammit, Tim tells it with heart and soul, so I don't care. I want to believe.
And, besides, Pandora is an amazing service. They've done one thing really well - music discovery. They haven't focused on the Genome Project for the end user, they've used it to enable that discovery and then let us find it. They haven't loaded us down with features or made extraneous claims or wanted to be the next MySpace. They love music and musicians and I know they love their customers, 'cause I'm one and they've been so awesome.
So...some great stuff was said tonight at the Pandora presentation (which, I guess, they've taken on a very successful roadshow across the US...into really remote areas where loads of people show up - they are up to 2.5 million regular subscribers) that I would love to repeat here because there were some major gems:
- People say that radio stations will only play popular music because that is what people want, and then people want popular music because that is what the radio stations play - it's a circular issue that online digital music can disrupt. Online, mass consumption is not necessary for success.
- We are building out a middle-class of musicians. I dream of the day when Jane or Johnny return from college and say, "I want to be in a band" and Mom and Dad say, "Good for you" because it is a solid profession, like being a teacher or an accountant.
- Years ago, it cost hundreds of thousands to produce an album. Today it is free. Powerful editing software comes standard with every Mac. (From Think Small: "Failure is cheaper than ever, so fail often")
- Today, record labels are the norm, but they should be just one of the choices. We have the means of production and promotion.
- We will never ever slop music because someone is paying for it. Popularity is no factor in what goes into Pandora.
- Pandora is a well-curated collection. Musicians need to earn their place like anyone else with quality.
- Gospel music has been ignored by many record labels for years because of the 'small public demand' - on Pandora, it is one of the most requested genres.
They have no idea how disruptive their technology is. Or maybe they do.
Just think: Pandora + Magnatune + MySpace (and its competitors) + Creative Commons + + +
:: I talked to Tom afterwards about putting together an indy artist online promotion guide. We've actually had 3 amazing artists approach us about this in the past month...let's make indy the norm and record labels a 'choice'...
Tags: pandora, indy, indymusic, magnatune, creativecommons
3 Comments:
Great wrap-up Tara.
The meeting was great, it would have been nice to hear what more people in the audience had to say. I was surprised at how many music industry folk attended.
Pandora > *
Savage Beast itself was a really interesting company, but was unable to get traction. They took that tech from SB and turned it into Pandora, which is cool.
But longterm, I wonder about them.
But longterm, I wonder about them.
Yes, I think something more than basic graphical ads will be needed to make this a long term venture unless they get bought out by someone big.
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