Real Rad Magazine : Summer Quarterly 2015

Right after Napster came Pandora - a
concept based on the premise of analysis
and comparisons of musical styles, genres,
albums, artists, tracks and even components.
Its beginning in 2000, revolutionized the
popular view of streaming music from the
taboo of P2P sharing (as found in Napster)
to a simple online radio, tailored to individual
taste. Pandora hasn’t changed much over the
years. You’ll still find a dark blue theme, a box
to type your favorite artist, track, or genre into,
and a playlist that immediately grabs your
input and provides similar music after it. The
current drawbacks of Pandora include a lack
of control: you cannot move backwards to a
previous song; you have a limited amount of
skips; and you can essentially keep a song or
get rid of it. There is no five-star rating system,
but there are thumbs to indicate how you feel
about a track. Another drawback is the ads -
but with one small one in the lower left, and a
larger one to the right, they can be ignored.
Finally, one aspect of Pandora that has been
regarded as “smart” (but, like many “smart”
tech ideas, can be irritating) is its playback
timeouts. After so much time of a user not
interacting with the site, playback will cease
and the site will ask if you are still there. This
is because Pandora still must pay royalties to
artists for playing their music - and, as a mostly
free model of music streaming since 2000, it
has gone quite broke. Users do, though, have
an option to pay Pandora.
Pandora One is an option with all of the
features of regular Pandora, plus, more skips
are allowed, there are less music playback
timeouts, a custom skin feature is available
for the web service, and there is an option
to utilize a pop-out music player. General
impression: Pandora is an easy go-to when
you’re looking for a fun playlist based around
a theme or style. Impromptu Halloween party?
It’s got you covered.