From the Curators: Pandora’s Guide to Summer Listening

May 24th, 2013 by in Inside The Collection

Memorial Day weekend is here! Kick off your summer fun by firing up the BBQ, hitting the beach, hangin’ at a picnic, hitting the road and launching into some summertime music. Our freshly sun-screened curators invite you to bring our expanded selection of Pandora Summer Stations with you!

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 Decades of nostalgic summer hits….

Evoke a carefree summer mood with feel-good Summer Hits of the 2000s including tracks from Matchbox 20, Christina Aguilera, Nelly and Jimmy Eat World.

Flashback to the Summer Hits of the 90s with summer Pop, R&B and Rock hits from Boyz II Men, Third Eye Blind, Britney Spears and Nirvana.

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A Personalized Social Experience

May 22nd, 2013 by in Listener Experience

I’m excited to announce a new way to share the music you love with our new Facebook integration. On iPhone, Android, and pandora.com, you can now choose to automatically publish your Pandora music activity to Facebook which will populate your musical identity in Facebook’s newly launched music section.

pandora-publish-to-facebookWhile we’ve offered social features that allow you to explicitly share your Pandora stations and music discoveries to Facebook for some time, today’s update makes sharing effortless. This means it’s easier than ever to discover new music from friends’ listening activity in your Facebook News Feed or by checking out the music section on their profile. The new music section on your Facebook profile includes a dedicated radio collection which offers a great place to find inspiration for new stations to listen to.

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Pandora Premieres: A New Way to Discover

May 21st, 2013 by in Listener Experience +The Pandora Story

Today we’re thrilled to introduce Pandora Premieres, a brand new way to discover music on Pandora.

Premieres ImagePandora Premieres is a new kind of station for us that lets listeners enjoy on-demand access to early album releases from a variety of artists before they go on-sale. We’re kicking it off today with records from John Fogerty, and Laura Marling.

Once the Pandora Premieres station is added, you can choose to hear any track on the featured albums, in any order and as many times as you’d like, until the album hits the stores. We encourage you to tune in regularly because new albums will be featured every week, with some artists also offering additional exclusive content like video interviews.

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Inside the Comedy Genome: The Art of Analyzing Humor

May 16th, 2013 by in Inside The Collection +Pandora Innovators

Pandora has been offering comedy for over two years now and we thought it was about time we shared some of the inner workings of our Comedy Genome Project. This month we have a guest post from our esteemed Comedy Analyst, Dave Thomason. In addition to analyzing comedy bits in his day job, Dave is a fine stand up comic in his own right. Thanks for reading!

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I think it’s some sort of rule that if you’re going to talk about analyzing comedy, you have to mention that E.B. White quote: “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies of it.” I’ve been analyzing comedy at Pandora for two-and-a-half years, and I thought it would be fun to explore some of the characteristics we listen for in a typical comedy track.

Screen Shot 2013-05-15 at 1.38.00 PMIn our Comedy Genome, the categories of genes I find most interesting are the ones that characterize the “Comic Hook” of a particular track. These genes try to answer the question, “What’s funny about this?” We don’t have an objective measure of funniness; a joke that you find hilarious and insightful, another person may find dull and offensive. But what we try to do is keep track of some of the most common devices comedians use in pursuit of a laugh. Read More →

Pandora Comedy Celebrates Two Years of Laughter

May 6th, 2013 by in Inside The Collection +The Pandora Story

Funny stuff is happening at Pandora!

This week marks two years since Pandora launched the Comedy Genome Project. Just like our music stations, Pandora Comedy is designed to give our listeners a personalized listening experience to help them discover comedy they love, while providing artists with radio airplay and a new way to connect with fans.

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Since May 2011, our Comedy collection has grown from 10,000 comedy tracks to over 25,000 tracks, and from 700 to 1,700 comedians. Each of those tracks has been analyzed according to specific comedy traits before being added to the collection.  We’ve captured exclusive content at performances in both New York and Los Angeles and hosted live comedy sessions at our Oakland HQ for comics Jason Love, Don Friesen, Beth Stelling, Will Durst, Ian Karmel, and Kevin Avery. Since the launch, we have also doubled the number of comedy genre stations with exciting additions like Women in Comedy, Alternative Comedy, and Latino Comedy.  Read More →

From The Curators: Your Pandora Guide to Cinco de Mayo

May 3rd, 2013 by in Inside The Collection

Cinco de Mayo commemorates the somewhat improbable victory in 1862 of the Mexican army over a larger and better equipped invading French force, in what became known as “La Batalla de Puebla,” or “The Battle of Puebla.” The French returned the following year, occupying Mexico for the next three years, but we’ll save that for a different blog.

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In the United States, Cinco de Mayo has become a festive celebration of Mexican culture and heritage, which seems to gain in popularity every year. It provides us with a chance to indulge in some of Mexico’s many profound cultural contributions, with music being at top of the list. With this in mind, we at Pandora would like to invite you to give our Cinco de Mayo genre station a spin! Read More →

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