Los Angeles Recap…

by on October 1, 2006

Started the day off with a stimulating conversation with students at USC’s Annenberg school. Thanks to Aram for inviting me. Particularly interested to hear the students’ thoughts on the listener-to-listener part of the service. Los of lessons to be learned from the existing social network sites.
Amazing location for the evening get together at the Silent Theatre. Quite a bit of discussion around the rigths and opportunities for artists – clearly reflective of the many musicians, and music label folks in the audience.
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I was impressed with the general commitment of everyone there to furthering the interests of musicians…


Interesting debate between simplicity and features. That remains a constant point of debate and discussion. Lots of people seem to want more granular control over their playlists… while others are really pushing for staying simple. Also a number of people advocating that we find a way to get old vinyl into the genome. Would require a pretty intense process for us, but certainly appeals to the idea of the genome as an archive. Lots of great early music has yet to make it to digital.
Also really enjoyed the extended discussion at the end with folks who stuck around to chat.
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Off to Boston, Amherst & Providence, RI…

Comments

  1. kitty
    October 01, 2006 at 12:25pm
    hey u r so retarted
    Reply
  2. christopher
    October 01, 2006 at 9:26pm
    thanks for dropping by la tim. it was a relaxed and informative talk and im glad i attended. from my side it was great to hear how focused you are on getting recognition to artists and that you realize that's your core strength as a company. it must be very cool to trek around the company discussing your business and interacting with interested creative people! best of luck going forward.
    Reply
  3. johanna
    October 02, 2006 at 6:25am
    Hi! Just to pass on a message to the development team: Amazing work!!! That must be quite an algorithm, not to mention all the other functionality you have managed to get in. I am *really* impressed that Pandora was eventually able to pick up not only what type of music I wanted (rock, electronic...), but also that I wanted Christian music. (I decided to try out one genre consistently first. Hadn't realised it was a challenging one.) The UI is nice, but there is much more that you can do around the gereral user experience as I am sure you know. The whole Last fm community chatty thing may not necessarily be 'it' though. But at the moment the site feels a bit bare. Regards from London & keep up the good work! happy subscriber Jo
    Reply
  4. johanna
    October 02, 2006 at 6:27am
    Hi! Just to pass on a message to the development team: Amazing work!!! That must be quite an algorithm... not to mention all the other functionality you have managed to get in! I am *really* impressed that Pandora was eventually able to pick up not only what type of music I wanted (rock, electronic...), but also that I wanted Christian music. (I decided to try out one genre consistently first. Hadn't realised it was a challenging one.) The UI is nice, but there is much more that you can do around the gereral user experience as I am sure you know. The whole Last fm community chatty thing may not necessarily be 'it' though. But at the moment the site feels a bit bare. Regards from London & keep up the good work! happy subscriber Jo
    Reply
  5. janet planet
    October 02, 2006 at 1:12pm
    From my POV the meeting was interesting to a point, but I came away feeling let down as I expressed my feelings about your human-musician-music-loggers and the fact that simply describing music in the most basic way - as pandora does now - does not take into account the many genres and sub-genres of music, both Western and globally. As the founder and editor of the African Music Encyclopedia I am still amazed and shocked that pandora has 3 choices for either African & World music (and they are Hugh Masakela, Alpha Blondy, Fela Kuti, and Zap Mama, a group with revolving members led by a woman who was born in Africa but raised in Paris - that's it for your African music choices). Comparing music by simple musician terms doesn't really come close to being helpful. Right now I'm listending to a pandora radio station I named African Beat Radio - and what is playing is pop Portuguese music (yuck) because your loggers tell me this track features: sophisticated harmonies, catchy hooks, portuguese lyrics, r&b roots, and brazilian influences - none of which would describe African music. But really, none of that is appropriate for someone requesting African music. The only connection is that the Portuguese were colonialists in Africa for a time. Most of the time I get mainstream latin or jazz when I'm really requesting African music. For example, the song playing next on African Beat is a song by Keith Jarrett and he is a jazz artist and nothing else, Jarrett does not play African music by any stretch of the imagination. Why am I receiving that song on my African Beat station?!? Is it because Jarrett is African-American? That makes no sense whatsoever! Regardless of Jarrett's skin tone, he does not play African music! African music is not jazz and not easy listening, and not pop! There are many types of African music that come from the 54 countires on that continent. It needs a definition seperate from what you are working with now. As does your Reggae description. I really urge you to expand your staff and hire some people who understand music outside the narrow confines of pandora's very basic definitions based on Western music so they can describe the music appropriately!!! I have emailed your office about this 1.5 yrs ago and had a short email conversation with someone who did nothing in return. A complete waste of my time. I have a huge collection of African muisc, much of it already digitized, that I have offered to assist pandora with. Tim - In addition to my above lengthy (sorry 'bout that) comments you also didn't mention that many people in the LA Pandora Town Hall mtng were also interested in the following: - being able for pandora listeners to actually see the charts/graphs HGP has generated about both the music, the artists, and the song popularity and requests. - an online forum or real-time php chatbox for pandora users - more interactivity Thanks for the kewl swag! --janet planet
    Reply
  6. JP
    October 02, 2006 at 8:08pm
    I agree with you on some points there, Johanna. There's something to be said for refusing to classify music into traditional genres, but the musical clusters you do make need to have -something- perceptually significant in common. Regarding African music, try Ladysmith Black Mambazo. It's not quite traditional-sounding, but better than nothing. Also try Google searching using the term "site:pandora.com" One of the listener advocates informed me that Pandora would be releasing a large number of World Music items once they worked out a better way to classify them and had amassed a sufficient number of songs to fill out this rating system. She also mentioned that an advanced interface would allow for more tweaking in the future. I'm hoping the following types of music will end up in the database, but I'm not holding my breath: canto a tenore (Sardinian polyphonic chorus), Gregorian and other Western and Near-Eastern chants, traditional Far-Eastern overtone singing (like Tuvan throatsinging, though not heavy metal kargyraa), South African choral music (like Ladysmith, sans major rock or pop influences), puirt-a-beul, and Eastern European traditional choral music. In the meantime, Magnatune.com and various band sites have some good sounds... I Have a Yong Suster, by John Fleagle http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/fleagle-bliss/15.m3u (The middle-English lyrics are comprehensible when written, but the "Latin" is mostly gibberish) medley of Bogh Dondjin-Garav and Chyraa-Khoor, by Tabargan http://www.avantart.com/sound/tabargan2.m3u Japanese artists mixing Mongolian and Tuvan. Unusual, but interesting.
    Reply
  7. Rory
    October 03, 2006 at 6:23am
    Just found out about this website and can I just say what an amazing facility. A sincere thanks for all the effort to whoever put it together. Fantastic.
    Reply
  8. SHIRLEY ROMANO
    November 03, 2006 at 9:37am
    Thank you for putting up Clay Aiken's ATDW CD for sampling. He is my favorite singer, and his voice on this album is just incredible. I'm so happy that people will have a chance to hear all his great new stuff. Of course, there are two bonus tracks missing from your set (which is a sad fact for me) for I believe these two are his best of the whole CD. One is called 'Lover All Alone' with music by David Foster, and lyrics by Clay Aikne, and the other is a cover song called'If You Don't Know Me By Now" with Clay wailin' these lyrics in a whole new way. Thanks for your great website. shirley
    Reply

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