niche music and pandora

As I pointed out a few irrelevant posts ago, the recent rise in web-based technology and broadband connections is leading to a niche focused entertainment model in America - the blockbuster is dead, and entertainment providers must drastically change their business models to fit the new niche-focused approach the web requires.

This afternoon I found an amazing free music player online that's following this trend and sure to be huge very soon. It's called Pandora, and the idea is simple: you provide the name of a few bands or songs that you like, and they create a free internet radio station playing songs you'll probably like. The people at Pandora have spent what seems to be quite a bit of energy cataloging and categorizing every song in their database, claiming to have recognized "hundreds" of attributes on each of the bands I entered. The pandora player comes in two varieties: a free player, which displays ads on the website, but doesn't make me listen to them, which is a lot more than I can say for other free players (that's right, AOL), and a paid subscription service which kills the ads and lets you skip as many songs as you like.

The business model is perfect: Pandora asks users to tell them if you like the songs as they play them, and this serves two purposes. First, it gives them some information to pick your next song from, and second, it provides them with a little free market research. They provide the service for free or at a small fee, and clicking on the songs gives you the option to head over to Amazon and purchase the album. In short, everyone wins.

The effects this could have on the music industry are huge. If a musician can get his or her music onto Pandora, they'll become instantly accessible, and through sales on Amazon, instantly profitable. If Pandora keeps the submission process open, this could be an excellent legal solution to the current music-pirating problem, and spell the middle of the end for the bloated corporate hacks at music labels and in the RIAA who we all know and hate so very much.

Music currently exists in two (legal) forms: for free on the radio, with ads, or for a price on your CD. So far the exclusion of niche marketing and ipod accessibility has crippled internet radio, but with the growing momentum behind wireless browsers, it might not be long at all before free services like pandora can make their way onto your mobile device. I think the radio/ownership dichotomy is here to stay, and hopefully services like Pandora can successfully implement the radio model without frustrating or restricting their users.