Is Pandora Radio?

While Pandora does clearly deliver music to the people who are logged on to the system are they using the service as a replacement for radio or as a replacement for their MP3/I Pod music player or playing CDs?

Radio has always had competition for music listening from LPs, 8 tracks, cassettes, and now MP3/IPods.  You could always get your music without listening to the radio.  Obviously now it's become a lot more compact and anyone can carry around thousands of songs in the palm of your hand.  Still radio's listening levels have not taken that big of a hit from the evolution of personal music listening.

While it seems that we in the industry, clients/advertisers, investors and industry pundits all seem to be looking at Pandora and other customizable music services we may be forgetting the real role that radio has developed with its audience.  That role has evolved beyond music to entertainment through the personalities and the imaging as well as the local information (traffic, news, weather), the infotainment, and the promotions/community events that we bring to the audience.  Really the music is not designed to be 'your personal favorite music' - it's a collection of the most popular songs in a given style (Rock, Pop, Country, Contemporary).  This is 'Broadcasting' and it is different from individual casting.  

Yes if the individual casters get their product to be more usable in the car and as easy to navigate as broadcast radio they can have more opportunities to take away time spent listening to music on the radio.  But, the Pandora's and Slackers of the world are computer program driven systems to build personal streams and libraries of music for individual listeners.

No doubt they serve a purpose, but it very well could be the ultimate replacement for the CD collection or even the MP3/IPod collection.  Why buy songs on ITunes or carry around your music and have to go through  the task of downloading and categorizing it when you can punch in some artists and create channels around them that you can sculpt to your taste.

Yes, radio should explore the new narrow casting - customizable media.  Clear Channel moving into the Thumb Play world is a good thing as is CBS with Last FM.  Just keep in mind that both CC and CBS will be gaining a lot more by developing the strengths of their long standing broadcast properties.  

14-24s Radio's Lost Generation - Under 14s Radio's New Frontier

Remember when you got that long awaited new toy back in your pre-teen days? That extra cool electronic device, maybe a guitar, an Atari game system or a fancy new bike that you just had to have. You shed other interests or gave up other desires for that magic 'thing' that you thought would be the ultimate. Then after you played with it for a week or maybe a few months or maybe even a year somehow the magic just wore off. It sat in the corner or maybe it broke and it just faded into the pile of junk we seem to gather in life. Suddenly something else came along that looked a lot more interesting or perhaps it didn't live up to all your expectations and you moved on.

As we look at all the new media toys like IPods, Internet radio stations like Slacker or Pandora, Satellite Radio, I Phones, the latest Cell phones, social networking, IM, text messaging, video sites and whatever is next on the web that challenges radio for entertainment you can bet that a lot of them could end up just being the new toys for the 14-24s or Millennial generation.

Remember that the Millennial generation (born from the early 80s to 2000) are the first generation that largely grew up in the personal computer age. When they hit elementary school in the mid-late 80s the Apple computer was already in nearly every classroom. Most in the U.S. saw a computer enter the home and have some Internet access in their teens and the younger ones have never lived in a home without a computer, over 50 cable channels, VCRs, DVDs, complex gaming systems, hand held games, cell phones and the web with high speed access at their finger tips. They have embraced all the new technology and shunned the old much like the boomers jumped on TV, instant world communication, and jet travel.

Radio's role with the Millennial generation was clearly diminished because Radio didn't pay much attention to this new emerging generation. Spending it's merger and Wall Street diminished programming resources on the older 25-54 generation deemed more instantly rewarding by the forces in command, radio began to fade. But, so did broadcast TV, the record industry, and land line telephones. The Millennial generation had NEW TOYS to play with and try out.

But, how long will the new toys last? Look at the cell phone in your hand. If it's more than 2 years old chances are it's starting to look like a relic. Even if you are a tech savvy person you probably never even figured out all it's toys or uses. Even my daughter's phone has lots of features that she rarely uses or doesn't want to bother with.

Remember all this new media technology is new. While logging on the Slacker Radio looks like an ultimate personalized web radio station programming it to play your favorite songs takes hours and hours of sorting through thousands of selections. Building and maintaining your IPod that holds thousands of songs is a daunting task ripping CDs into I Tunes and spending time every couple of weeks downloading new songs. Then you have to rate them, build playlists, and keep the database up to date so you can find that favorite within the thousands of titles. Building that cool Face Book or My Space site may be fun at first, but maintaining it and keeping up with all the friends, adding new pics, adding video clips and communicating with all these friends that may live on the other side of the country. It could be so complex and time consuming that sooner or later the new toy starts to sit in the corner.

You also have a new generation on the way that's younger than the Millennial generation. Right now they are under 10 years old. Will they be as excited about all this new media as the older generation above them? Or will they more likely establish their own turf starting 5 years from now as the first of them enters high school?

If radio starts thinking and planning now latching on to this new generation could be the 'turnaround wave.' Will they rebel against all the pitfalls of lives on the web and seek more personal and imaginative communication and entertainment options? Could radio's simplicity of use and low cost coupled with links to the new media world be an attraction to younger audiences again? As we look at some of the research done on the younger side and the early PPM results we see radio having an impact in the younger side.

It's a possibility but we'll need some help from the top levels in our industry, music, ratings services actually doing a representative job measuring the new generation, and a realization that this audience has marketing value from the agencies and sales forces. Arbitron is already moving to younger demo measurement in the PPM system moving below 12 year olds. We will likely have more stable samples as we move away from the 1 week diary measurement to longer term behavior data. We will also have new bands (if HD ever happens) and at least opportunities to provide stronger products in the Internet broadcasting field. Hopefully our hunger and need to reinvent ourselves will lead us to entertain and program to have an impact in this emerging generation.

Radio could be HIP again! But, we need to start planning now.

Pandora - Slacker - Custom On-Line Radio

Perhaps you've read about or even visited either Slacker or the Pandora on-line radio sites. Both sites have a variety of on-line stations but also offer the ability to make a custom station just for the listener. Pick a style or an artist and you decide how deep the library will be, which songs are your favorites, and what artists to include in the mix.

Now they also offer portable players. Pandora has units that take a stream from wireless connections wherever you can get to one. Slacker is a little more interesting as it uses a cache system to load up the player quickly then allow you to keep listening even while you are away from the stream. Slacker is also working with a satellite system so you will be able to listen on the road. Slacker has negotiated rights to the music on the system and are not burdened by the Sound Exchange royalties world but Pandora could be in trouble as streaming fees increase. There are some unique limits - both offer the opportunity to skip a song and move ahead but only 5-6 times in an hour. With Slacker you can purchase a premium subscription and skip as much as you want.

Ok fancy tech, but how well does it work in the real world. I decided to put together a station myself and see how well it works. I was a big fan of the Byrds and it's been years since I spent time with their music so I chose them as an artist to center my station around.

When I punched up the Byrds artist station on both Pandora and Slacker it was a unique adventure. The Byrds show up about every 15-20 minutes or so on the Byrds station on both services. On Slacker the rest of the selections are from all kinds of bands that were either influenced by the Byrds/CSN world like Tom Petty or REM and the rest are bands either from the era (Beatles, Grateful Dead, Airplane) or that share a folk style (Dylan, Fairport Convention, Lovin Spoonful). You can set the mix to be more obscure or familiar or center it on an era (but here are no currents or recurrents to work with). On Pandora the mix was very different with tons of new Indie bands (some we've never heard of from indie labels) in the mix and very few 'era' moments.

You can also create a station so I tried to build My Byrds Radio. By selecting songs as favorites I was able to build a list and then set the station to mix in those favorite songs either once in a while or a lot. But, I had to listen to each song all the way through - a long process just to build a Byrds station. Trying to steer the station away from the long Fairport Convention songs or the Grateful Dead jams I didn't want was going to take forever. On Pandora it was even worse as most of the non-Byrds songs were indie bands even a rock programmer couldn't ID that sort of sounded like alt/pop versions of Byrds songs. Sorry I got other things to do - it would be better just to go to my CD collection rip off the Byrds CDS and a few other bands into a Byrds file on my MP3 player and sit back and enjoy.

Still it's an interesting option. It may catch on and become the next interesting application of Internet radio. While Slacker may not have Sound Exchange over it there are still issues with the system that are designed to limit the system so some fees can be collected or so you will be stimulated to go out and buy some music instead of putting in so much effort to build your own world. Pandora on the other hand will sit on the edge of its seat till the CRB decides the fee issue.

Is it a threat to terrestrial radio? Maybe but it's a lot of work to make any of these services personalized. Yes some will jump in, but they won't quit listening to us.