Tom - Congrats on all the changes! I really appreciate being able to dig around and find people who are onto the same artists that I am! All the best!

Keep up the good work.

One more thing... with all the changes it started me thinking of all the other things I'd like to see, so I created this site where we can all post our suggestions and vote for them as a community.

http://ideabox.crispyideas.com

If it catches on, maybe there will be some ideas in there that could go into your next big update.

I heard a rumor that Tim Westergren was used as the hand model for the thumb. Can you confirm or deny?

I've been a registered user of Pandora nearly from the very beginning, a little over a year ago, and I have appreciated every minute of my time I've spent listening to new tunes on this site. Now that you all have made it possible to browse the Pandora community for other listeners' tastes in music, I've found more new tunes and have better tuned my stations to be just right. I will continue to use this service for a long time coming and continue promoting it to friends.

Thank you all so much.

Pandora is the best thing on the web.

I <3 Pandora (:

How can I un-thumb-up a song I thumbed, using the new web interface for editing stations?

I love the changes, it's been fun navigating through the Pandora network and finding even more cool music!

I love pandora *-*

I also like the changes you made to the station editing interface. I posted my detailed feedback in the previous blog though because you hadn't put up the new features blog entry yet.

Just want to let your whole team know what a wave Pandora is creating across all age groups. I'm in my 50's and fairly tech functional, so it is fun to see my kids generation adapt instantiously. What really impresses me about Pandora is the way my slow adapting friends and relatives are taking off on Pandora. They are grabbing on much faster than any other tech resource to come out! Keep up the great work. Also, as a friend of musicians I love how Pandora helps to spread the experience of new artists and music while respecting their musical rights. Congrats to the whole team!

This is just WONDERFUL, guys. I LOVE it. :) Nice work.

I just noticed the ad that comes up when you change stations. I am not amused, but at least they are not audio ads. I hope that you will offer a pay service someday that will provide:

Ad free listening
User defined stations (that only play thumbs up songs)
The ability to listen to an entire album
MP3 player

Is anyone having the same problem as me? on the new stations pages, the arrows below the lists of songs or artists doesn't work unless I click on them and then I refresh the page.

Anyway, besides that I'm loving the new features.

Another thing: looking at those "most thubed up" and "most thumbed down" songs I was thinking it would be fun to see the same rankings, but from the whole Pandora universe. There would also be a ranking of the "most controversial songs": songs equaly loved and hated.

Always cool stuff from Pandora. I keep coming back for more!

Thanks, and keep up this stellar project.

I like the new web interface for editing stations; however, there should be a way to go to an "Artist Seeds" or "Song Seeds" page listing all of the artists or songs. It's kind of a pain to have to arrow through the list five songs at a time, especially since you have to wait for the page to load each time.

Great job, though :)

I agree 100% with Dave (see below). It is almost unuseable. I want to see my whole list when it comes to editing, or even viewing my station.

Pandora rocks!

------------------
Posted by: Dave at December 21, 2006 03:07 PM

I like the new web interface for editing stations; however, there should be a way to go to an "Artist Seeds" or "Song Seeds" page listing all of the artists or songs. It's kind of a pain to have to arrow through the list five songs at a time, especially since you have to wait for the page to load each time.

Great job, though :)

To those looking for a more efficient way to interact with station pages (Dave and David for example) we hear you loud and clear. We're working on it now. These pages were really built with you in mind -- we want it to be easier to tune your stations not harder. We'll make this better.

Tom
CTO @ Pandora

Thanks for making me realize my main station has over 5000 songs that I rated... No wonder it took so long to load the list in the player. :/

I don't know whether to be depressed at the quantity or cackle with evil glee.

MERRY CHRISTMAS PANDORA!. I LIKE MY D.J'S. TIM! YOU CAN SURE SLAM THE DOOR'S ON THE SLIMEWIRE.COM. HOPE YOUR OUTPUT CONNECTION CAN KEEP UP WITH YOUR LISTNER'S. THANKS, FOR A CONNECTION, THAT NO OTHER CAN MATCH. PAUL_MERRITT2002@YAHOO.COM.

I like pandora!It's new for me!
But I can't search for Cara Dillon'songs,who can help me?

I one thing to say. You music heads keep better and better with thsi site. The more tools you add the more I look forward to streaming. I really do think you guys are the best music source for streaming in the web.
Happy Holidays from my family to yours

Hey,I just wanna say that french people love Pandora :)

I don't know where to put this, so I'll put it here. I went to launch Pandora today and got a loud Comcast ad with a hypodermic and a chicken and no apparent way to turn it off, except to leave your site. Which I did.

I won't be back for a long, long time.

Here's the extra layer of idiocy in this ad: I already have broadband from Comcast. Are they trying to UNSELL me?

Two bad impressions for the price of one. Pandora loses cred with me and so does Comcast. Craptastic!

hey!

i wanna tell to youthat i have searched many gruops, and pandora cannot find them, like "cinema strange", or the italians "kafka"

why?

when can you put this groups online?

thats all!
thanks!

I think the new features are nice, but I would like to see RSS feeds for the new comment stuff. Something that would let me know when someone posts a comment on one of my stations or my profile.

Just found Pandora Today! Absolutely unbelievable! Going on six hours of listening. I can not walk away. I'm big Sagetv fan, can not wait for someone to combine your service with sagetv.

I will definitely be a paid subscriber.

Thanks for making my day.

The new profile page is so busy! I hate losing space to "most thumbed-up" and most "thumbed-down", which I hardly care about.

I have a huge list of bookmarked songs. It jumped from 18 to 30 pages with the latest changes, because so little space is devoted to it. Please do something. A couple suggestions: provide a way to show just a single list you're interested in - in my case, the bookmarked songs, but maybe people or stations for someone else. Or, allow tailoring of the profile page, to expand the size of sections that have a lot to display, and possibly even to remove parts of no interest.

The above comment also applies to editing stations. The old way was not so pretty, but I could much more easily remove a song or two from a station with a lot of thumbed-up songs using it, than I can with the new interface, due to the need to scroll.

I love the way you're continuing to improve Pandora, but making old features harder and more cumbersome to use seems to be an unfortunate side-effect, and some of those features are important to me!

- Alan -

Is there a way were we can have an in between vote. Some songs I do not hate but I do not extremely like either. Can we have a so-so vote instead of no and yes.

Bring back the Station Edit that appears within the player. I want to be able to see and scroll the complete artist lists or song lists for a particular station.

It bugs me alot not to hear the song I ask for first,, then find similar ones.! Other than that everything is Wonderful

Pandora got a shout out yesterday on NPR's All Things Considered (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6692082).

i love ya'll.
kisses, kimberly

Loving this Pandora, used it when it came out, had a good time. After that i kind of forgot about it, now i am using it again and i am loving the new features and am browsing other people's music tastes pretty much, and i am liking it a lot. Thanks pandora :)

cheers.

Happy New year to the whole Pandora team!
You're doing a great job guys!

TO ALL MUSIC FANS & PANDORA CREW:

SORRY FOR MY ENGLISH- BUT... WOULDN'T BE NICER IF WE COULD FIND SONG LYRICS? WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT IT... I'D BE GLAD TO RECEIVE SOME RESPONDS ;)

One nice change might be taking James Brown off tour. I know it was the holidays but its been a week. Show some respect to the GFoS.

These new community features are REALLY wonderful. What great ideas! What excellent execution. You guys should be really proud!

i really wish I could tag my stations with keywords, then sort my stations by tags!

Have you improved the thumbs up song selection algorithm?

I'd been avoiding some of my stations over the past couple of months because they seemed to be playing the same songs over and over. However I've started to listen to them again and I find that the selection from the songs I've given thumbs up to has been much wider and less repetitive. I've also found that the new songs selections are getting a bit broader as well.

If you made changes, then I'm definitely enjoying them. If not, I guess my luck has changed and I should go out and get that lottery ticket.

Tom, I am excited about the new features, but I must express my disappointment at the audio ads. Are they at least only at the beginning and not interrupting? Pandora is a much more valuable service without audio ads.

Pandora ir very nice,

...check my project:

http://www.purevolume.com/sebastianrodriguez/
http://www.sebarodriguez.blogspot.com/

There was a MCDONALD's AUDIO ADD in on of my stations this morning, I am dismayed to say the least, I figured Pandora would be selling out sooner or later...*sigh*

If the i-Pod is "The Perfect Thing" as Daly's book states... well then Pandora is "The Perfect Website"

Unbelievably cool.

YOU COULD HAVE AT LEAST IMPLEMENTED PAID SERVICE BEFORE ADDING AUDIO ADVERTISING TO YOUR SERVICE. I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT MCDONALDS. FEEL FREE TO CONTACT ME WHEN ONE CAN SUBSCRIBE TO AVOID ADVERTISING.

I'VE BEEN A BIG PROPONENT OF PANDORA.COM UNTIL YOU SLIPPED IN THE AUDIO ADVERTISMENTS.

BAD SHOW FOLKS!!!!!!!!!!!

HALLELLUJIAH PANDORA IS THE ULTIMATE MUSIC WEBSITE. MY GOD YOU ARE SO GREAT YOU REALLY GIVE ME A COMPLETE ENTERTAINMENT SATISFACTION. KEEP IT UP...

IM HERE IN THE PHILIPPINES O JUST LOVE IT WHAT CAN I SAY. HOPE YOUR ALWAYS I MEAN FOREVER FREE.... GOD BLESS YOU PANDORA

I had forgotten about this site for quite some time, and found myself pleasantly surprised by the improvements when a friend reminded me about it.

One suggestion.

Please give us a "Not sure." rating to choose, rather than simply a "Like it." or "Don't like it." That might require some major tweaks to your ratings algorithm, but the end product will be worth it.

any way you can add a feature that shows how many times our station has been heard and who is currently listening?

Dear Tom & the rest of the Pandora team: I love this new community feature, it was a marvellous idea!

I listen to Pandora almost everyday and trust me, you make my sometimes rather tedious work much more bearable.

I just have one request: would it be possible to add more European music? Especially French? (I was happy to find Coralie Clément on Pandora, though!) And maybe some classical? Or is that field too wide?

But anyhow, love your work and Pandora, so please keep it up. :)

I also expressed my displeasure at the audio ads yesterday, but my submitted comments were not posted here. There was no foul language, however I did type the entire message in capital letters to accentuate my displeasure.

For now I'm going to switch to my iPod and skip listening to pandora for a while. I hope that you will consider removing the audio ads until people can subscribe to your service to avoid the ads. I don't mind paying for pandora, just don't make me pay by listening to ads. I don't listen to standard radio for music to avoid the ads, so I don't want them on my internet radio either.

When you do offer a subscription service, please do contact me because I will definitely be interested in signing up.

Regarding the postscript about the Flash upgrade issues... I am having some issues even though I am on the latest version of Flash. Very few of the javascript links work, even though I am sure Firefox is not blocking popups. Both my work and home PC have these issues, even though which specific links don't work may differ.

Really fine.

I added a friend some time ago because I knew his mail, but now is easier ;)

Hi Tony, Evan, & Lyle, and others concerned about the audio ad on Pandora.

Right now the audio ad is just a test -- we've put it out there to see what our listeners think. It's running for a limited time, and only a small subset of our visitors are hearing it. There's just the one ad you heard.

Your responses are just the kind of thing we need to hear during this period; so thanks for commenting.

There are significant costs associated with delivering Pandora and we have to find ways to cover those costs to be able to continue to deliver the service. We're always trying to strike the right balance between keeping the site going and not doing anything that takes away from the experience of listening to Pandora.

I really do hope you'll stick with us as we sort through all of this; we certainly value your feedback.

Tom
CTO @ Pandora

I was horrified to hear an audio advertisement on one of my stations today. I understand the need to, you know, make money, but I sincerely hope you will be able to find another way to do so. As bright and garrish as the visual ads are on the page, I can stand them. The audio ads are another story altogether. I am certain I will be driven to find another internet radio if the audio ads keep up, which I really do not want to do, as Pandora is such a great service!

Hi Tom,

I am an MBA student at the Queen's School of Business, Canada. I have been very impressed by the concept of Pandora.

I was thinking that an idea such as this would have great potential in India. With a population of 1 billion people and Bollywood(Indian) Music almost a religion there, there is an enormous opportunity if Pandora could build something like this for India.

If you are interested in something like this, please let me know. I would like to work on a project like this with Pandora. Eager to hear back from you.

this site is SWEET

hey check out a band called The Cranston Foundation

Good luck Tom

You move my soul to dance! I'm loving it! Each day more and more! What is the best thing that I can be with you all just pressing digitals and listening (:
me and my friends from Europe enjoy it the most! Big hug!

Add me to the ranks of people *most* displeased about the audio ads! I had no problems with the visual ads around the player - they were mostly tasteful (some even pretty) and relevant, and I had more control to my exposure to them - and they didn't interfere with my music!

The audio ad popping up in the middle of a music stream, however.... !!!!!! Very. Annoying.

I imagine you get more revenue for audio ads than the visual ones. If you absolutely must have that income, then perhaps just a single ad when a listener switches stations (sort of like the video downloads that have a 30 second ad before playing) would be an almost-tolerable compromise. And please, let listeners subscribe to support the service before you make the advertising *worse*! So many people would love to support Pandora without suffering/being turned off by the ads. How many have you lost already because of the trial run??

That, and I'm another one who can't figure out how to un-thumb a song in the new edit station interface. Could you please update your FAQ to reflect the new features in the last few months? Thank you!

yours in wishing Pandora a bright and non-annoying future,
Sa Capriox

Oh, and I figured out the problem with editing the stations - I wasn't logged in on that page. You might want to alert listeners that just because their player automatically opens their stations, doesn't mean they're logged in (and therefore only able to view station pages, not edit them). That, tweak the system so that logging into your player automatically logs you into any page you access from your player.

Tom, I love Pandora and have been using it every day since I first discovered it a year ago. I understand the need for ads and have no quarrel with the ads on the side. I have been impressed that Pandora has maintained the honest image without the audio ads. I see other sites (in particular video sites) that always play an ad before allowing you to watch the video. I can't stress how much I dislike this.

I heard the audio ad today, which has driven me here to comment. I saw your post and understand it is just an experiment. I want to throw in my opinion - please do not sell out like everyone else. You have established a positive cultural image in my mind. Don't destroy it - because I, like many others, will feel betrayed and will leave. There are alternatives, and the audio ads - even if few - will be enough to push people away.

Lastly, I do appreciate the user feedback. Your listening to the users shows that you actually care - business decisions can never be made from a purely strategic standpoint. If you ignore the cultural impacts, Pandora will falter.

Hmm... So the audio ads are even in place for paying customers? Talk about giving no incentive to subscribe. :(

I also got one of the McDonalds ads friday evening, and I quit listening for the rest of the weekend.
I do wonder how much more the audio ad must be worth before it cancels out the revenue lost from many hours of banner ads.

I definitely understand the need to make money, but moving more towards standard radio format with ads is detracting from one of your main selling points. If you end up in a place where the only difference between you and broadcast radio is the "better" selection of music you offer, I can assure you that Media Player will remain the staple it once was on my desktop.

Lastly, McDonalds? Seriously? You have fairly intelligent algorithms for music selection but somehow think I'd be interested in a big mac?
Could you not come up with a more interesting sponsor for your pilot at least?

hey - i got one of those audio ads today - first time ever. it makes me nervous, but hearing an explanation from the CTO helps. perhaps we can hear more about this through a separate blog post?

Hi.

Please, help me to find a song. I used to hear it on the radio 20 years ago.

I've tried to find it out since the last month, I've spent a busload of time every day seeking it on google, eMule and Wiki but I haven't met anything cause I don't know the name of the song neither the artist. I just know the melody.

It's an old instrumental pop song, the trumpet plays the melody but it doesn't sound like modern jazz because both theme and harmony are too simple. The beat goes like a boogaloo, trumpet keeps little changes over the same few notes, harmony hasn't more than 04 chords.

The trumpet runs through arpeggios in Bb key:

E C G E (arpeggio down)F A C F (up)

E C G E (down)F D B G (down)

E C G E (down)D B G E (down)

E C G E (down)G B D C (up)

I've looked up from Horace Silver to Ray Conniff, from Herb Alpert to Louis Armstrong, from Richie Ray to Grant Green but I didn't find anything.

Trumpet head, major tonality, Simple Harmonic Progressions (or even "Basic rock song structures"), without improvisation (at least as I remember). Could you help me to find it?

Thanks.

Andre.

What's up with Pandora lately? On my NIT POP station selected artists and songs hardly ever play.

At it for an hour this time and only five songs of the appropriate genre have played. The system locks into specifc genre at start and won't give it up and move on.

It plays far too many obscure artists. Lisence agreements are an issue. When system is off course and attempts are made to redirect into a appropriate stream for the station. Just tried it and was rejected because I ran out of alloted thmbs down. That should never happen, if system was following direction, properly.

Just signed off in response. This is not what I signed up for. Won't be around long if system continues have a mind of its own, instead of the direction it is given. Music selections were just terrible for this session.

Please, please find advertising methods that are not intrusive. Banner ads are fine. Having audio advertisement intrude upon my listening experience was a major factor in driving me away from radio and would do likewise with Pandora. I like finding out about new music but not enough to put up with radio-style ads, especially when the month of nonstop music I have in my MP3 player has no such downside.

You people make music awesome. I love Pandora! If we wanted you to add a musician how could we make a suggestion? Like for instance Chris Bathgate.

Would be nice to "freeze" a shared station's definition. The person who created the shared station you are listening to will likely evolve the station over time, sometimes irreparably changing it. It would be nice to keep the station as is at a moment in time.

I really like Christian Pop and I couldn´t find much: Michael W Smith/Br Duncan/ Leeland/etc.
Are you guys working on it?

Just got this Tipp!!!
How can I thank you guys!!!!! This is GREAT!
cheers from the other side of the pond!
Manfred

"Hmm... So the audio ads are even in place for paying customers? Talk about giving no incentive to subscribe. :("

No, I subscribe and I've never seen or heard an ad.

Hello, I am enjoying Pandora so much. It really does help me to get through my day at work. I love Gospel music and being able to hear some of my favorite artist and songs throughout the day has made a tremendous difference in my performance. Thanks Pandora, I'm so thankkful to have found you and I have introduced you to many of my friends.

There is nothing on the internet that I know of that not only has great music but allows you to discover new artists tailored to your taste. I love you Pandora.com. Will you marry me? : )

Does anyone know the real name or artist for the song that started 'Sign, sign everywhere a sign--Do this dont'do that...lalala

Please respond if you do

Thank you for listening

Tom, I appreciate your response to my complaints. I haven't been listening to Pandora since I said I wouldn't, but I will probably start up again.

I understand the need to advertise and thought the visual ads were a good way to go. I actually paid attention to those ads and wrote the some of the companies that were advertising and thanked them for supporting Pandora. I commented on their products and either pledged to continue using them, try them in the future or consider them in the future.

I do hope that you are able to come up with some sort of subscription model so that those of us who do not want audio ads, but do wish to be loyal pandora users can listen ad free. I wouldn't mind keeping the non-audio ads as long they're not the flash type that interrupts changing stations, etc...

Thanks again and I hope that Pandor.com the company and those of us in the community who can't stand ads can find a way to support each other.

Cheers,

Tony

Wow. I just found this site through another music site I love, GrayCharles.com. He introduced his readers to Pandora a few days ago and I love, love, love it! I have it playing constantly when I'm on the computer now. I am discovering artists and songs that I really like that I never even heard of. I've got my husband listening to his own station now and have promised my daughter we'll get hers going this weekend.

I am going to be using (and talking about) this site for a long, long time.

Sorry for jumping the gun a little about the ads, it's good to hear that it is a test run, but it's still disappointing. However if ads are skippable just like songs then being able to skip them would be better. The worst though is that it was McDonalds, the most nororious and flat out annoying schemes of advertising on the planet, and worse still is that the Pandora demographic is the LAST group of people that want to eat, see, or hear about that kind of trans-fat poisonous refuse. Ads that are music-centric or at least music-culture-centric would be less insulting.

I will say that, as a designer, I think the Pandora player "framework" ads are very well done AND tasteful, the Altoids ads are very memorable.

I just wanted to say thnx, man...I mean, really, there might be tears...

mc donalds advertisement?.... ok , but.....no it these food please....

This site is awesome!!!! A coworker turned me on to it earlier tonight and I have been jamming and working since.... I look forward to many nights of Pandora and work....

When you first enabled Shared Stations, I thought it would be cool if I could influence my experience of a Shared Station with my thumbs feedback. It seems I now can, but if I do the Shared Station ceases to reflect the station owner's future feedback? I would have preferred you allow me to put a filtering lens on a dynamic station - not adopt the station as my own. If the station owner likes a song, but I don't, my vote should win out when listening to my version of their station. Other than that, I want the Shared Station to reflect the station owner's ongoing input. Otherwise it ends the conversation.

(Is there some other place you would have preferred I posted this comment? A forum?)