This is all about name-recognition.\u00c2\u00a0 Investors are stupid.\u00c2\u00a0 They know little about the products of the companies they lay their dollars down for.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re acting on buzz.<\/p>\n
And buzz has nothing to do with profits.\u00c2\u00a0 Certainly not long term.<\/p>\n
What we’ve got here is a phenomenal job of brand-building.\u00c2\u00a0 Tim Westergren, like a carnival barker went out and sold a service based on a combination of hucksterism and I’m on your side duplicity.\u00c2\u00a0 If Mr. Westergren truly cared about music, he’d be a manager.\u00c2\u00a0 I haven’t seen someone this dedicated to building something from zero to superstar status in eons.\u00c2\u00a0 But there’s too little money actually promoting music, building stars, and talent talks back, digits do not.<\/p>\n
In other words, it’s really damn hard to nurture and break talent.<\/p>\n
It’s much easier to build upon the hard work of others.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is why record labels\/rights holders demand so much from Pandora, after all, it’s built upon the equity they’ve created, without the music, Pandora is nothing.<\/p>\n
Analysts have noted this.\u00c2\u00a0 Pandora’s lack of scalability, its huge rights payments.<\/p>\n
But what analysts have not drilled down upon is the service itself.<\/p>\n
It just doesn’t work.<\/p>\n
People become infatuated with new technology.\u00c2\u00a0 They love to check things out and tell others about them.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t that the key to making a YouTube clip go viral?\u00c2\u00a0 But just because you’ve got millions of views that does not mean you’re rich.\u00c2\u00a0 Or that you can replicate your success.\u00c2\u00a0 It just means that for a moment everybody got excited about you.<\/p>\n
For a moment, everybody got excited about Pandora.\u00c2\u00a0 It was so easy to use.\u00c2\u00a0 But did it satiate?\u00c2\u00a0 Was it satisfying?<\/p>\n
If music radio is to survive, and that’s doubtful, it’s all about curation.\u00c2\u00a0 Serving up music you want to hear.\u00c2\u00a0 Pandora fails at this.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite the vaunted Genome, just too many suggestions are tuneouts, some positively dumbfounding.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you really expect people to sit for this, pay for it with their cash or time in a world where people only want the best and have no time to waste?<\/p>\n
In other words, the future of listening to music, of breaking acts, of exhibition, is not Pandora.<\/p>\n
Slacker does a far better job of curation, because it’s done by human beings.\u00c2\u00a0 But Slacker doesn’t have a Westergren, almost no one knows the company.<\/p>\n
But Slacker doesn’t satisfy either.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re interested in what they air but you constantly want to hit the button to see what’s next.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re interested in the list more than actually listening!<\/p>\n
Investors expect that in the future people will pay to listen to crap.\u00c2\u00a0 Huh?<\/p>\n
The future of music exhibition does not revolve around algorithms but people.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about personalities, cults, built around the deejay. Which is why all radio research is flawed.\u00c2\u00a0 Radio is not about the tracks as much as the trust.\u00c2\u00a0 Is the deejay my friend?\u00c2\u00a0 We hang with imperfect friends, we’ll listen to a song on their recommendation that we may not initially like because we like THEM!\u00c2\u00a0 We don’t really like Pandora.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s nothing there other than a bunch of wanna get rich suits.<\/p>\n
Just like there were MP3 players before iPods, the future of an ad-supported streaming music service, or even a paid subscription service, is not Pandora, but something after, something later, something further down the development curve.<\/p>\n
We see this all the time.\u00c2\u00a0 Techies were communicating online for years before AOL made it easy and desirable for the general public to get involved.<\/p>\n
Windows 3.0 was a vast improvement over MS-DOS, but it wasn’t until Windows 95 was released that computer acquisition by the public went nuclear.<\/p>\n
Hell, disc burning was all the rage eleven years ago, but the trend was brief, it was eclipsed by the iPod.<\/p>\n
I’d love to tell you Pandora is a great service.\u00c2\u00a0 Aren’t we all looking for someone to turn us on to new music?\u00c2\u00a0 But every time I use it I’m frustrated that its suggestions aren’t better.\u00c2\u00a0 As for those testifying about it, I just put their opinions in the pile of the ignorant.\u00c2\u00a0 No one ever e-mails me about Pandora who has tried Slacker.\u00c2\u00a0 Pandora users are not usually SiriusXM subscribers.\u00c2\u00a0 What we’ve got here is a huge set of clueless adopters who will jump rather quickly to the next best solution.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is coming.<\/p>\n
I mean isn’t Pandora just a list?\u00c2\u00a0 And I can use that same list to check out tracks on Spotify or Rhapsody or MOG or…<\/p>\n
But everybody gets caught up in the mania.\u00c2\u00a0 No one wants to investigate and learn the truth, someone pointing out flaws is accused of being a downer, a naysayer, someone who doesn’t believe in the future.<\/p>\n
But that doesn’t make the enthusiasts right.<\/p>\n
And just because there’s a blockbuster IPO that doesn’t mean the company has a future.<\/p>\n
P.S. I do believe adding comedy to Pandora was a brilliant move.\u00c2\u00a0 But they haven’t marketed this feature well.<\/p>\n
P.P.S. If you really want to know what’s going on with Pandora, follow the tweets of David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby On Rails and best-selling co-author of "Rework".\u00c2\u00a0 Hansson is the antithesis of Wall Street.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s about building businesses that make money from day one, he’s about PROFIT!\u00c2\u00a0 What a concept!\u00c2\u00a0 All we’ve got is these corporations losing money making their executives rich.\u00c2\u00a0 Like Live Nation and Warner.\u00c2\u00a0 Come on, there are no miracles here.\u00c2\u00a0 Occasionally companies turn the corner but why can’t these companies make money now?\u00c2\u00a0 Why can’t Live Nation balance the books and pay its execs less and make money today?\u00c2\u00a0 Or at least say the loss is about investment in Ticketmaster, in the future.\u00c2\u00a0 Same deal with Warner Music.\u00c2\u00a0 If you can’t make money running it, maybe you’re not so smart, or maybe you’re just a crook, or maybe it’s just a bad business.\u00c2\u00a0 If it’s your own private company, do what you want.\u00c2\u00a0 But if your company is public, you’ve got a fiduciary duty to investors.\u00c2\u00a0 But no one believes in the law anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 Not Goldman Sachs, not the second rate banks. Everybody just wants to get rich.\u00c2\u00a0 From Westergren to the venture capitalists to the wannabe artists.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s much easier to do than to make a great record, to make a truly great product.\u00c2\u00a0 Pandora is all about subterfuge, the same way labels sell generic music.\u00c2\u00a0 Get everyone excited, put down naysayers, get the mainstream to hype you and sell.\u00c2\u00a0 But that stuff is almost always crap.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like Pandora.<\/p>\n
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