The demise of Pandora has been greatly exaggerated. I talked about the possibility of Pandora being shut down back in August. The doubling of royalty fees for web-based radio stations sounded like the death knell for Pandora.
Since then, they have implemented an ad generating solution, short commercials that play between every 3-5 songs. There is also a web ad that appears beside the radio station interface. Not a bad price to pay for a customized listening experience that is above all other internet music services.
Will continue to monitor this, as Pandora is a great learning solution for classroom dialogue about how music is related in terms of instruments, beats, voice, etc. As explained why Queen’s “Under Pressure” was selected on my Billy Joel radio, the song contained basic song structures, major key tonality, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, prominent bass riffs, and subtle use of fender rhodes. I am no music major, but this piqued my interest in the term “fender rhodes”, which is a type of electric piano. Wouldn’t it be cool to use a mind-mapping tool, such as Inspiration, to create a visual representation of each song Pandora selects to be played.
