Q: Can you comment on the differences in Pandora's behavior between having a song as a song seed vs a thumbs-up?

To clarify, lets say that I have a station where a song comes on that I really like. How would Pandora react if I just thumb-up the song vs. going in and adding it as a station song seed?

Q: Is there a way to "clone" a genre or other "built-in" stations? I like some of your genre stations but I can't tweak them because they're shared. Without having to reproduce the station's seeds and thumbs-up/down settings manually, it would be nice to be able to use them as a starting point to a custom station.

i'd like 2 things:
1. album bookmarking
2. plug-ins for some of the more popular media players (WMP, iTunes, WinAmp, etc.)
thanx // nick

Why doesn't Pandora charge a subscription fee?

I've discussed this with a number of friends I've turned on to Pandora. General feeling is that we'd all be willing to pay $50/year, maybe even more ($10/month?) for this service.

Would that solve some of Pandora's fiscal problems? Or would it just create new ones?

I already pay a yearly fee to Live365 so I can listen to their programming ad free. Live365 and Pandora compliment each other.

I've turned a lot of people on to Pandora. No one can believe it's all free. The first question is always "But how do they make money?"

Really.

OK Tim ... I read in an article somewhere on the internet that Pandora is closing shop. Tell me this isn't true!

If so, tell me what we all can do to keep it going .. it has helped me find all kinds of good music that I would not have been able to find by myself!

Thanks for Pandora!

Ken Slaughter

I, too, would be willing to pay for Pandora even though it's a service I don't use frequently. But when I use it, I enjoy its recommendations and I have frequently bought music from its recommendations. But I buy music through Amazon and the iPhone can't purchase music this way. Also, iTunes doesn't work with 3G which is what I use it over since my office blocks Pandora on its network. It would be cool if Pandora partnered with (or was bought out by) Amazon and developed a way that I could buy my music from the iPhone even if it meant the download occurred post-purchase on my PC/Mac. They could even email me the music file. I used to use The Filter but I find Pandora to be much better.

I'm another listener who would be willing to pay a fee to keep pandora up and running. Amazing resource.

Just a thought; sorry a bit unrelated to the most recent post. I found out for the first time today through ReadWriteWeb that Pandora was in danger of being closed. If you want to give up easily, one way to do it is not to tell the listeners that you're in trouble and not ask for help. However, if you can instead leverage your user base and let people know (put a notification on everyone's main page with instructions to call a congressman like at http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541), we will be able to help you out! Viva la Pandora!

Hello---My best friend lives outside of the country and is very sad he cannot have this wonderful program! when will it be available outside of the US? it makes me sad when people hang their heads and say "everything is always for the Americans"

thank you!

Was just turned on to Pandora and love it...hope you aren't shutting down. I do have one complaint (from the perspective of iPhone users.) Figured out that while I'm live streaming Pandora that all of my calls go straight to voicemail (unlike when using the iPod function, an incoming call interrupts the music so you can either answer or decline the call.) Just wanted to make sure I haven't missed a setting somewhere in Pandora where I can keep this from happening.

Hey Tim ,

My first visit....
Today is the day I found a pandora's box full of wonderful beautiful music ..... just love it .... thanks to you and your website ..... If there is anything that we can do to keep you afloat ......

I just read the article my wife forwarded about your possibly having to shutdown Pandora. This was such a great site! We were able to listen to music we wanted to hear and also were introduced to music/musicians we wouldn't have normally had visibility too. I must confess, as a customer of the music industry I'm growing tired of this constant barrage against webcasting. The music industry is really shooting themselves in the foot if they think this is appropriate to keeping they're customers satisfied. Tim, what can we do as listeners to get a voice out there and help?

I noticed that, starting today, you seem to have eliminated the display of the "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" status symbol that used to show when hovering the mouse over the song playing or songs previously played. Why did you eliminate this feature? It was very useful.

Loving the new "menu" button format. It's much more intuitive than the previous pop-up version that I had to hunt for!

Tim,

I'm sorry to say...but the new buttons on the player (at the bottom of the track playing) aren't a plus...they're a step back in design.

Why on earth would you change those buttons when before they were better reflective of whether or not it was thumbed up or down before? It's less clear and too small. Make the buttons bigger and more responsive to changes already made! Thanks!

Re: Creating a new station.
With the latest update to the client on 8/19, it appears that there is now no way to create a new station based on the track currently being played.

Was this feature removed or is it hidden in a menu somewhere that I haven't found?

Hi,

Two things:

1. I just want to say that I love Pandora and want it to stay alive. I hope there is a way to do that.

2. Something changed in the thumb up/down function. It used to be that I could see whether I had previously thumbed up a song, now I can't and I think I keep having to thumb up the same songs. I like the old function better.

I noticed that the interface changed recently. The thumbs up indicator that shows when you have given the thumbs up for a song is just about invisible on my screen. The old interface was better.

Is there an easy way to unmark a song as liked from the listening page?

I keep putting songs to sleep, but that's not quite what I want. It would be great to control the seeds for my station from the listening menu, like the thumbs up or down already let me do. I don't mind digging into it a little, for example from the up arrow menu in between the thumbs, but I don't like going to another page for it.

I don't like the change I noticed today that when you click on a thumb it doesn't acknowledge your choice with a check and "remember" your preferences, so you can see if you've already approved of that selection. Bring that back, please. It helps me see what preferences of mine my station is built on. Thanks!

Heya Tim

Look Ive gotta huge problem with my pandora... Every time I sign in with MY name and password, my sisters profile comes up. Ive tried everything to get to mine, but nothing works. I don't think its my computer b/c It does that on all computers... So do u have any suggestions on how to sign out of her profile and sign into mine.
(Let me know if that's not enough info.)
Other than that I love pandora. Its gives us what we want, old and new.

It would be really nice if music was also categorized by lyrical content so that if one wanted to hear devotional music for instance one could select "my sweet lord" and hear similar themes rather than similar tunes.

Hey Tim, quick question. Lets say Pandora just played a really good song and I want to hear it again, how do I replay the song?

I need Pandora for my car.

Is there a way to generate a list of music I have given a thumbs-up to? I'd like to get some albums, but have to wait till a paycheck coincides with the momenent that the song that sparked my fancy (hopefully) comes around again.

Bookmarking is available, I know, but it really does require too much foresight for me to use to the "oh yeah, I should buy that disc" purpose.

I'd like to to third, fourth, fifth, or whatever the change to the thumbs-up/down buttons. I'm an Mature-American and can't remember what I had for lunch, much less whether I favorited a tune or album before.

Why the change? I don't approve!

Bruce from Greenville, NC

I like the concept for the Sono device you have. Maybe you could put a speaker into the remote, so it's more portable.

Definitely do NOT like the changes to the thumbs up/down. Please at least bring back the old ones.

I have to agree. The old thumbs were better because if you marked a song you had a visual indication that you did mark it so you don't have to mark it again "just in case."

Apart from that... Pandora is amazing. No down side! It's like a big air conditioner for the ears.

Pandora is one of the very few websites I turn adblock off on. I can't tell you how much I hate the RIAA. Its rediculas that you have to pay over 70% of your (what I assume to be before tax) revenue in Licensing fees. Considering how much you guys have helped the music industry you think they would give you guys a break for boosting sales. If you guys have to shut down because of the RIAA's crazy licensing fees I will NEVER buy another album from any RIAA-member label ever again.

Problem with new UI...
Before I could hover my mouse over an album picture and it would show me if I had voted "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" for that song. Now nothing shows up and I have to vote on every song to be sure that I did in fact vote. Also, after voting for a song, there is a "pop up tab" that comes up and says "Cool..." and I have to click to get rid of it. Voting on songs was much easier before. Total lame...bad move Pandora.

Guys, your thumbs up icon is still displayed on a song if you've previously voted for it. The only difference is that the approve/disapprove buttons are now more out of the way. I like the new layout.

Regarding your new "thumbs up thumbs down" format, the "thumbs up" now doesn't reflect whether I previously voted "thumbs up" (like it used to do) or not. This "upgrade" is a regression.

Re: The new thumbs format

You can see if you've voted in the upper right of the artwork tile, in a grey watermark. We know that it is a little too subtle right now and we're working on making this more apparent ASAP. Thanks for the comments about this, we appreciate listener feedback!

Wow, I never would have noticed that if you hadn't pointed out the gray watermark. Then again, I'm red-green colorblind, so maybe I'm in the minority.

If you've voted for a song before, the thumbs-up or thumbs-down control for that song should simply stay lit.

Not only does this make it perfectly clear, it makes it immediately apparent that there is no need to vote again, unless you've changed your mind.

And I concur with other people's sentiments regarding the value of this service and the willingness to pay a reasonable price for it.

Why shut down a service without asking your customer base first whether they'd be willing to pay a subscription fee?

To me, that's like making http://www.google.com/ go dark tomorrow because Google didn't meet its quarterly targets.

Thanks,
Mike

RE: New thumbs up/down

Now that the water mark has been explained it sticks out to me :D... It makes the interface much cleaner

I like it...

Your comments on this blog are also messed up. This is aDCybrosis, and my previous comment is attributed to "Matt", the poster before me.

Johnny,

The overall dislike here of the new "upgrade" of the UI should say something. I know that things haven't changed overall...and most of us can see that things are "thumbed" up or down...but it's unnecessarily faint...and not only that...the old feature of blocking a thumbed up or down is completely GONE. Gray that one out, block it from being clickable something. That's just a simple rule of good UI's. I thought the original UI was a hugely great example of how to make UI's work...unfortunately you guys had to prove me wrong.

So that's the big problem here to those in defense of the new UI. Guys...bring back the old UI!

Other than that...keep up the good work. And keep up your fight against the RIAA. Greedy trolls... :-)

Thanks for listening...please now act. Thanks.

Regards,
John

I love this box. Thank you. You have got to be a bad ---. Smile always. All day memories, Forever and always, Sunshine

Damn,

I enjoy Pandora, and I can't stand the thought of something so wonderful to die like this. If you ask me, hoping on appeals made to the government is pointless. They won't act fast enough, I'm sure of that. You should have an option to buy a subscription from Pandora in which users could pay to download the song, or, if you don't want to do that, you could encourage users to buy a subscription that would allow features such as repeating tracks, or a back button so you could listen to previously played songs.

//Mason

Just tell me where to send my money. Pandora must not die.

Can you make it work on the Sprint Instinct phone. Your website states: Pandora works with any Sprint Power Vision Pack. But it will not work with this phone. P.S. Your site is great and I have told everyone I know about it.

I would love to be able to indicate a "thumbs down" for anything by a particular artist when one of their songs comes up, rather than just a "thumbs down" for the particular song. Is that possible?

I like it so far, but I was wondering if you could allow us to create seeds by selecting certain musical characteristics. I keep wondering why certain styles popup when I have no interest in them. Could we choose to keep intricate melodies, string arrangements, and drop bluegrass influences?

Thanks

Thanks for "fixing" the thumb up function...and by "fix", I mean put back the original functionality.

Thanks SO much for restoing the visual cue to the thumbs up!

Yo! Tim this is banging.........but Yo how can I find more hip hop with less of the N word and more Instrumental Hip Hop and R&B songs (50cent,T.I.,Jeezy,etc) clean version........I appreciate you and what you have accomplished....SmegG PEACE

Tim,
Thank you. I don't even have a radio in my car. They are always broken. (men) I am older and have gone thru the heavy metal, top 40's and all that. this is the first station ever I can choose to listen to what I want. Its awesome. Its made my work day and my home life more bearable. Please Please don't let it go away.

How does an indie musician without a record label get their music on Pandora's radar screen?

I'm enjoying Pandora immensely! I will be very sad if it goes away. I would like to find out more about the nuts and bolts of Music Genome. There are (a very few) "genes" which seem obvious to me, but aren't represented. It appears that genes are selected to encourage "cross-genre" pollination.. a good thing.
The "select a song/album" interface to the Music Genome project is brilliant, but, I would occasionally like to reach down into the station and smack a particular gene up or down. Could you consider this sometime after you get finances and more important features dealt with.

GOOD JOB ON THE BUTTONS,THUMBS UP AND DOWN HAVE
A CHECK MARK NOW SO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU PICKED AND DIDN'T.THE OLD STYLE WAS GOOD.BUT I GUESS YOU CAN DECIDE THAT LATER ON TO KEEP IT OR NOT.IT'S A SIMPLE THING BUT IF IT'S NOT RIGHT PEOPLE WILL LET YOU KNOW.KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.

Pandora is such a blessing to my husband & I. We have a wonderful genre of vocal & soft smooth jazz music of some of our favorite artist. I have been trying to find a station that plays alot of Michael Franks music & I have finally found it. Along with Norah Jones, Diana Krall & many more.... At times we are in the office working & then we end up dancing & singing to our favorite tunes. Thanks for the creative beings in this company, many blessings to your organization. If you all ever decide in the future to charge a annual fee, we would also support! God bless each of you! :-)

I'm a new Pandora listener. Gotta say: this is simply my all-time favorite website. Period.
Two questions:
1. Why can't I stream Pandora through my home stereo (like I do with some radio stations I listen to on-line), without purchasing this special software called 'Airfoil'?
2. When I bookmark a song or artist, why does the bookmark list automatically open as a separate window? I just click it closed 99% of the time. I would prefer if bookmarks were recorded "silently", and could then be simply looked at by clicking on a button when one wants to see them.
Thanks so much for Pandora. Really loving it.

Thanks so much for all the suggestions, and feedback!

We read all your comments, and appreciate your thoughts on how to make Pandora better. :)

I've responded to many of your questions posted on this thread personally, via email.

- Lucia, from Pandora

I have a request. Actually, one request with two aspects:
Could you add a feature(s) that allow me to request that all the music generated from a station (artist/song seed) be vocal vs. instrumental or vice versa? The other aspect would be a feature that would allow me to request that all music generated on a station be female vs. male vocal or vice versa.
For example:
Sometimes, I'm in the mood for just instrumental background music with a particular genome.
Other times I have selected a particular artist (e.g., Anita Baker) because I want to hear her music or music with a similar genome. To me, a male vocal doesn't fit into that genome any more than a country rock song.
Thanks (and Pandora ROCKS!)

I love Pandora. I get lost in it. I have several accounts, at home, at work...It's always playing in the background. Shaping your own stations is a lot of of fun. It's very organic, just like growing a garden.

I wish more data was available about the music like place and year of recording and the names of all known performing artists.

We need more diversity as well. African music is grossly under-represented, at least by the standard you set for, say, Brazilian music.

Thank you for doing this.

"Clear focus on studio production" is pretty close to "popular music only." Just saying ;)

Re: Thumbs - Hope you've noticed, we reintroduced the check marks on thumbs! This was brought back by demand from our listeners. Thanks for the feedback!

@ RCR - I don't think that's true at all. Frank Zappa had a heavy studio production focus, but that is as far from Pop music as you can get!

@ Free Spearit - Here's a suggestion. Try making stations based on a number of individual songs that exemplify the sound you are looking for. Stations based on an artist name will usually cover a broader range as Pandora tries to cover the artist's full range. You can add multiple songs to a station by clicking the triangle next to the station name and selecting "Add more music to this station". Look here (http://blog.pandora.com/faq/index.html#88) for more info on creating and tuning Pandora stations.

@ Pascal - Thanks for your suggestions! You're right, we haven't released our African music collection yet. When it's ready, we'll release it, and it will definitely be worth the wait!

:) Lucia, with Pandora

FINALLY, a radio website that caters to the needs of its listeners! I absolutely LOVE this website. It's one of the best online radio services I've experienced in a long time! Keep up the good work!

@ Johnny - That's true, but it's a rare Zappa song that's tagged with that attribute. I'm talking about how that attribute is used, not what it appears to mean. From my limited outsider's perspective, its actual usage seems synonymous with "radio friendly." It's similar to the "pop rock/metal qualities" attributes, which always seemed like a copout to me -- the MGP generally does a better job of teasing out real musical elements. But I'm not complaining, those attributes are typically spot on.

What ever is playing right now is AWFUL have no idea who or what it is but...puke!

Music Genome Project. What a brilliant concept!!!
You offer such a fantastic and (unbelievably)great Service. You make me proud! Thank you so very much, my brothers and sisters - Tim, Jem, and Aaron! Bless you!
PS Your alliance with Logitech much have been an absolute smash. They are also a great Company!

Hi Tim:

Huge fan of Pandora.
Some great suggestions above, I love the list of songs thumbed up, would work as a great hyperlink to iTunes or other online MP3 purchasing site, but how about also a dashboard that scrolls the song, album, artist, and thumbs-up, thumbs down buttons, keep people from having to alt-tab back and forth. Have an advertiser sponsor the dashboard for some revenue to keep pandora up, running and free. I'll make sure to link to iTunes through your site when I buy a song, hopefully they knock you back something more than a mouse pad.

I was wondering why some of the music I have in my profile is visited over & over again, while some is never touched. A previous writer asked about the fundamental difference between giving a song a thumbs up, and actually seeding the song; there-in may be the answer to my question. Incidentally, I have only one station, its parameters are very broad. I like it that way, I only hope that is not the problem.

Thanks for the comments, everybody! Great suggestions and feedback.

@ Marya -
If any song is playing too much for your taste, feel free to put it "to sleep" for a month. Just click on the song menu for that option!
If you need more help, feel free to email me at Lucia at pandora dot com

Thanks!
Lucia, from Pandora

An Itune rep showed me this sight. WOW and thanks for the great creative effort. Thanks a 63 year old 60s and 70s rocker and I dont mean in a chair.

I have a Mac and I hesitate to turn off the Block Pop Ups in my preferences.
I know your message isn't an ad, but wouldn't I just leave myself open to all manner of annoying ad if I turn it off?

Hi, I'm wondering if you've explored a business model where it's free to listen, but in order to have stations *saved* it is necessary to subscribe. Just a suggestion...

please let me know how pandora is doing
I would hate it if I couldn't hear the music. I plan to also start listening from home. I can
listen longer from home.

I love pandora are there any thoughts on placing a replay button as an option? sometimes i just love the song so much i want to hear it again but have to wait until it comes back. Also, any thoughts on personalizing pandora so everyone has their own look when they log in and can customize it.

PANDORA is the BEST!!!!

Thanks for all your feedback and suggestions, guys!

@ James - Don't worry James, we're doing fine. We've got some royalty negotiations in store for us, but we'll do everything we can to keep bringing you the music you love!

@ tammy - Sorry, we can't allow a "replay song" option, due to federal law! :) Interesting idea about customizing your pandora view. I'll pass that along!

Cheers,
Lucia, from Pandora

I am trying to find music based on content rather than style. I am looking for music with OR without lyrics that has been created specifically for emotional/spiritual healing. Is it possible to search for this type of thing on Pandora?

Dear Lucia et al,
I posted this comment instead of sending it to you directly because I think I have some points of general interest. If there is a forum where they would have been better placed, please let me know--it seems as though there should be.
It seems odd to me that people are sad that they can not hit "replay" for their favorite songs; I found that if I gave a song a "thumbs up" I might hear it twice a day. I had scores of songs in my thumbs up list from my first few weeks of listening, so that eventually it seems that all I was hearing was songs I'd already heard.
Because there seemed a vast difference between hearing a song daily and not hearing again for a month I came up with a strange solution, that seems, so far, to have worked. Every time Pandora played a song I'd given a thumbs up I'd delete it from that list and put it in the seed songs or seed artist lists. If it wasn't all that, I'd just dump it, trusting it'd come around again eventually anyway. At the same time I stopped giving thumbs up to songs, they were either seeds or not.
I'm now hearing some entirely new stuff. We'll see in time if Pandora will actually play my song seeds or merely use them as reference points.

:: Product Development Idea :: Keyboard Interface Control Feature ::

Alt + RIGHT = NEXT SONG

Alt + UP = LIKE IT

Alt + DOWN = DON'T LIKE IT

Bottom line, increase in Song Critique Contribution = more data research.

Hi Misa -
Lyrical content is indeed one of the hundreds of traits analyzed in the Music Genome Project, but it is weighted in with many other musical traits, so it can sometimes get obscured.

Here's a suggestion. Try making stations based on a number of individual songs that exemplify the lyrical style you are searching for. You can add multiple songs to a station by clicking the triangle next to the station name and selecting "Add more music to this station". Look here (http://blog.pandora.com/faq/index.html#88) for more info on creating and tuning Pandora stations.

---------

Hi Marya -
Thanks for posting your thoughts! Great ideas. I love hearing the different ways people use Pandora. I think being judicious about thumbs ups and using lots of song seeds is a great way to go. (the song seeds will be reference points, *and* they will play.)

Thanks for sharing!

:) Lucia, from Pandora

Thanks Ryan!

Our keyboard shortcuts are as follows:

Play/Pause: spacebar
Skip Song: right-arrow key

"Thumbs Up" - I like this song: plus key
"Thumbs Down" - I don't like this song: minus key

Increase Volume: up-arrow key
Decrease Volume: down-arrow key
Maximum Volume: shift key and up-arrow key combination
Mute Volume: shift key and down-arrow key combination

[Note: Be sure to have the Pandora Tuner active in order to use these shortcuts (just click the mouse pointer once on the Pandora Tuner).]

Enjoy!

- Lucia, with Pandora