It’s been a pretty incredible weekend for Pandora and for me personally. BAR Camp was an amazing event; lots of really smart, passionate people coming together to share ideas. Fantastic.
Yesterday was my first chance to give a public demonstration of Pandora, and it was more fun than you can know to get to share it with this group of people.
The product was really well received, and there has been some great dialog at the conference (Scoble today called it “the talk of BAR Camp”) and around the blogosphere since. Here’s some of what’s being said:
Michael Arrington: Dig into the Music Long Tail – Pandora
Robert Scoble: Pandora Rocks BAR Camp
Technoogle: Discover New Music with Pandora
Kevin Burton: Pandora: Music for the Long Tail
Craig Randall: Pandora Rocks
Vincent Oberle: Pandora, My New Radio
One of the things that’s happened is that folks are starting to compare us to last.fm (for example this post: Finally: An Alternative to Last.fm). I’d like to go on the record as saying that I’m a big fan of what the guys at Last.fm / Audioscrobbler are doing. They uncover & expose people to all the social layers that music is wrapped up in and it’s always interesting to know what your friends (and others like them) are listening to. I’ve certainly found new music this way; anyone that’s out there trying to help people discover new music is definitely ok by me.
At Pandora we’ve just taken a totally different approach. With the Music Genome Project, we’ve built something that’s based entirely on the sound of the music itself. We’ll connect together a Metallica ballad with an Indigo girls song if they’re a good fit musically. We think that’s a unique take on the space, and that is creates really a delightful and totally unexpected listening experience. For my part, I think it compliments the great work going on at Last.fm / Audioscrobbler.
Want to listen? While we’re currently in a “preview” mode, we’re being very liberal with handing out invitations. If you’d like to listen to the service (for free I might add), drop me an email at tomconrad-at-gmail-dot-com and I’ll make sure you get one ASAP.
Pandora Tip: For those of you who are already Pandora listeners, you can invite up to 25 of your friends to the preview without getting us in the loop at all. Just click the little triangle next to one of your stations and select “Share this station with a friend”. We’ll take care of sending an invite out immediately along with a link to your station.
(Tags: barcamp, pandora)
August 22, 2005 at 9:51 pm
Super Cool
Michael Arrington sent me one of his invitations and I have been listening to Pandora all day.
I posted a few comments over at:
http://www.mason23.com/jack
Rock On!
Jack
August 22, 2005 at 10:22 pm
I’ve been listening to Pandora all afternoon. I also think it complements rather than competes with last.fm. Maybe your camps could collude so Pandora could update someone’s last.fm profile?
I love what you’ve done and have already emailed the support staff to offer help (esp. with expanding the songs “genomed”). I haven’t been this excited about a music thing since Fiona Apple’s latest album got leaked, and I found Audioscrobbler before that.
August 22, 2005 at 10:41 pm
I just invited a friend and we both have been amazed at how many of our favorite songs are sandwiched in with the new ones. Magical music telepathy I say! It’s like you snuck a peek at my iTunes library before playing things. Every other song that’s played is my new favorite.
August 24, 2005 at 8:41 pm
This is so amazing, there’s gotta be a catch around here somewhere. Although, I think I’m willing to pay for this service. I love it.
Thanks for the good music.
August 18, 2007 at 12:23 am
[...] was still in its (oh-so-short) private beta, I decided to head down to a two-day event in Palo Alto called BarCamp. The rules were simple: you show up, you present. It would turn out to be the very first public [...]