Pandora Radio: Worth the Investment?

I have been a paying member of Pandora for at least 5 months now. I have to say that before that I was an avid listener of the free commercial version, but I wasn’t impressed. At first I fought against listening to online radio because it was easier to listen to what I wanted by bringing my ipod to work and hooking it up to the speakers. After awhile though I started to tire of songs I have been listening to for years. I turned to Pandora through a recommendation for music that I was not originally accustomed too. I was hoping to find songs that I could later add to my iTunes to make a better variety. I turned to Pandora and half way through the month I had eclipsed their 40 hour free limit, and they offered that I pay $1 to finish the month or go for the premium version for $36 a year. It was around pay day so I felt… why not? I paid for what they said was higher quality, commercial free, and in general an easier to use version.

5 months later I believe it clearly is worth the investment. This is by far the best online radio I have used, and the premium Pandora “One” is actually playing music I am familiar with as well as fully utilizing their logarithms in giving me music that is similar. I have found over 20 new artists that I have now started following and realize that my iTunes is useless now. All I use is Pandora and I haven’t even thought of buying a cd or individual songs (except Talib Kweli and Anthony Hamilton) since that time I decided to pay for Pandora.

All in all I give it a 8/10.

I wish I could skip more than 6 tracks in in an hour, but with licensing I understand why it’s not allowed. The interface can by clunky at times, and I wish the skip and pause buttons were a little bigger. Other than that, I listen to Pandora on my iPhone like a radio everywhere I go, at work on the computer, on my ps3 to use my sound system, and on my laptop while I’m out. I love it, and would recommend the premium version for those who can’t live without music like myself. Thank you.

From the mind of
Keveeno Reeverts

Pandora Radio: Worth the Investment?

The Breaking Point

I am an avid blog reader of the music industry. Before I even thought I was reading blogs, I was enjoying them. The original blogs are reviews. Thats what blogging is right? A review of a certain point, a product, or even a review of how people dress. Well I loved reading music reviews, editorial reviews in magazines, and even reviews in the comment section of what people thought of that review. All that was what blogging was back in the day. Now its a market, with an industry, with people making a job out of it. I don't know the exact figures, but I'm pretty sure its competitive with newspapers and magazines going out of business. Which brings me to my point, I'm here to review a collection of blogs I've read over the past 2 years that have a similar topic, but is missing something. They all say that the record industry is failing miserably losing 20 some million dollars every year. They are all missing the breaking point.

When a business loses money, they look to find a way to keep their doors open and if they can't find it they close the doors. I wonder if people finally realize they can make their own coffee (or cawfee, however you pronounce it), would Starbucks close their doors? They closed 600 of them, but if people stopped giving them money, then what would their breaking point be? Would Starbucks close all of their doors? Or would they finally go back to their roots and make coffee thats actually coffee? Will KFC ever make non genetically mutated chickens if people learned how to genetically mutate chickens themselves? I mean people already know how to make music on their own, how to get it for free, how to burn and bootleg it, and even how to get free promotions from fans. What is this breaking point that will come of this industry? I said it before, I'll say it again, downsize to Indie labels or DIY if you want to work business and music, which is difficult as hell. Now when I say "downsizing" I don't mean that in a bad way, I just mean there are people who do one thing then retire, and they should not be getting more than a quarter of a percent of royalties. Thats why I like Indies, because from what I've seen everybody is a family working together. The majors pay a lot of people and here is some stats I got from Coolfer.com, from their Tuesday Business link section, and their other blogs.

"Digital distributor The Orchard reported a loss of $800,000″

"Napster has an accumulated deficit of $199 million."

Thats just this week on their Q3 earnings. Every week though, they state who was the #1 artist this week on Billboard and compare sales to this time last year. Sales are almost always lower than the previous year. At this trend will their be a year it just stops? Nobody buys music anymore and people who go to shows have been hindered by the rise of gas and ticket prices. I can go on about this forever, about how the major industry's are failing, if their going to collapse, how Indies are increasingly becoming a much better option, how even though Michael Jackson looks like an ugly woman he still does better music than most people, and how this recession is messing everything up (I won't get into politics because I get enough of it in life), but I'll just say that every business has a breaking point. Ex, Tower Records and Simon Delivers. WHAT IS THE RECORD BUSINESS' BREAKING POINT?

From the mind of Keveeno

The Breaking Point