Pandora

If I get one more e-mail about Pandora, I’m gonna SCREAM!

Pandora is a scam.  Plain and simple.  Another dot com production, just half a decade later.

How many times have we seen this movie?  With Firefly?  With other suggestion software?  It just doesn’t WORK!  If machines could tell us what feels good dildos would be as good as dicks.  And last time I checked, they weren’t (and they still don’t have a male version).

Why everybody’s a fucking lemming and is citing this as the future is unfathomable to me.

Let’s see how hard it is to start Pandora.  Just find a genre of music, pick all the key artists, pick a few good tracks, and VOILA, you’ve got a station picked out JUST FOR YOU!  Make me puke.

Don’t you see this is about MINDSPACE?  And that Pandora is laughing, hopefully, all the way to the bank?

It’s not about turning you on to new music, it’s about selling ADVERTISING!  Oh, you can avoid ads by paying three bucks a month.  But why should you do THAT, when for a bit over four times that you can get XM or Sirius?  Programmed by real people, with a hundred odd streams?  Why don’t you just give your money to these wankers with probably two employees. (Well, maybe closer to twenty, but don’t you get the point?  There’s a tiny investment in manpower and a whole lot of hype making you believe something is here, when it ISN’T!)

Think this through.  Sure, you might find a few good tracks.  But how much time are you going to invest in finding them?  I put "Jackson Browne" in as my station, and every time I’ve logged on in twenty minutes I’ve heard more mediocre crap I have no interest in listening to, never mind buying, than I hear in a whole DAY on Mike Marrone’s Loft on XM.

Let’s see…  According to Pandora, if you like Jackson Browne, you like the Babys’ "Midnight Rendezvous".  God, they didn’t even peak in the same ERA!  Maybe if you’re a wimpy girl you might see the two as core, but if you’ve got the Babys, why not REO?  Or Journey?  They’re probably coming.  And those acts are a TURN-OFF to the Jackson Browne fan.

Jackson Browne is a singer-songwriter.  I’d expect the Pandora station to play Karla Bonoff, Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, maybe even the EAGLES!  But I get the GIN BLOSSOMS??  And now, Paul Collins’ Beat.  Pandora gets props for obscurity, but "Walking Out On Love" has got NOTHING to do with Jackson Browne.

Like I said, it’s a scam.  By making you THINK the station is programmed for YOU, they get you to listen for too long a period of time, listening to music you otherwise would have tuned out, just so they can accumulate listeners to sell spots to advertisers.  Think about it, it’s radio with NONE OF THE COSTS!

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