Pandora's pitfalls

Recently, while digging through the business news, I ran into this article about Pandora's earnings shortfall: Pandora's earnings miss. Those of you that caught my previous articles about digital streaming's unfulfilled promise and digital vs. analog search know that I have been disappointed in the past by Pandora and other streaming services. The article about Pandora's earnings announcement inspired me to dig deeper into Pandora and whether my criticism is justified.

First, a disclaimer: I submitted Scattershock's album, Wrong Train, to Pandora shortly after we completed it. Within a short period of time we received a rejection letter, with the message, "Thank you for your submission to Pandora's Music Genome Project. We wish we could say otherwise, but we have decided that this submission does not fit our collection needs at this time."

Having attended UCSF for my graduate studies and received a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Pandora's use of the term "Music Genome Project" has often nagged at me. The concept of mapping musical forms by a defined set of criteria and using that mapping to establish relationships between artists is intriguing. What bugged me, though, was that unlike the Human Genome Project, Pandora's project is mostly subjective, based on qualitative assessment of each artist's songs. Here I have excerpted the goals of the Human Genome Project (courtesy of the HGP website):

 (The Human Genome Project's) goals were to

• identify all the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA
• determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA
• store this information in databases
• improve tools for data analysis
• transfer related technologies to the private sector
• address the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) that may arise from the project

 Those goals are clear and are all-encompassing. The first bullet point clearly states the goal includes ALL of the genes in human DNA. Imagine if the HGP had instead opted to catalog only some of the genes? Would the resulting data be anywhere near as scientifically useful? Absolutely not. Partial data in this case would lead to skewed conclusions and lack of confidence.

So then, what does that mean for Pandora? Well, they've opted to call their efforts the "Music Genome Project", with an obvious tip of the hat to the HGP. But, we know that they chose to leave Scattershock out of their database. And that's where the article about Pandora's earnings left me with this nagging question. Is there a reason that Pandora isn't simply blowing everyone's mind and making money hand over foot? There are clearly some fundamental business reasons why the streaming business may not prove successful for anyone. I'm not here to dig deeply into that question. However, I am interested in the question, "Why are some digital music services more valuable to me than others."

As a DJ (at KGLT) and a guy with a huge appetite for new, heavy music, I'm looking for ways to discover the wide variety of heavy bands all around the world. Pandora seems like it'd be a powerful tool for that but I wanted to understand how helpful it really is. I decided to assess a number of the music content and streaming services to see which ones fared best.

I decided to ask a fairly simple question, then collect appropriate data and analyze the results. I took the playlists from two of my recent KGLT shows and identified all the bands that I'd played. Then I asked, "How many of these bands could I have discovered using each of the music services I surveyed?". I have included the raw data below, but here's the executive summary:

Total Bands	Pandora	iTunes	Last.fm	Spotify	MOG
74	56	74	74	64	72
	76%	100%	100%	97%	97%

And that clearly demonstrates why Pandora has never worked well for me and Last.fm has. If I used Pandora, I wouldn't be able to play one quarter of the bands I play on my show. This data is for only two of my shows, meaning that over the last 8 months that could amount to over 100 bands simply left out of my show. Pandora would sweep them under the rug and pretend they just don't exist. You say, "David, but those bands are all obscure ones like Scattershock, no one knows about them and no one cares." If you look at the detailed data, you will see that Pandora's oversight includes Amaranthe, Bloodbound, Down From Up and The Slot. Sorry folks, these are serious bands with multiple album releases and videos. You might think that these bands somehow haven't submitted their works to Pandora, and that's a valid point. Maybe all these bands are boycotting Pandora for some reason. That's absolutely possible but, that just goes back to my point.

Pandora's collection is biased. It omits major name bands, many of whom have won music awards around the world. It also omits small, unestablished bands, some of whom will eventually become household words. And if you want to be an early adopter of such acts, you are much better off with any of the other services I surveyed, and especially iTunes and Last.fm.

So, tell me, what's your favorite music service? And, if any of you have invested in Pandora, what are your thoughts about your investment and the bands that aren't available via the service?

Streaming Service Comparison - the raw data...

So far, the promise of digital music falls short

It's my fault... Well, OK, not my fault alone, but really the outcome of my efforts combined with many like me. I've made a career as a software engineer, a career that began at Digidesign (now Avid) right around the dawn of the digital music era. It was an amazing experience, being surrounded by so many bright, motivated software people, nearly all of whom were also experienced musicians. Just about every office in the building had at least one musical instrument, a mixing board, an amp and other musical odds and ends. We all shared this grand vision of how digital recording was going to completely change the world, placing the real power in the hands of individual musicians and not the record industry. We musicians would no longer be at the mercy of talent scouts and no longer forced to pay $100 an hour to track our music onto fancy 2" tape decks.

And, in many ways, that's exactly what happened. The record industry has struggled in the last decade and, similarly, recording studios are having a tough time figuring out how to stay in business. But, musicians did not benefit to the extent we all envisioned. Instead, companies like Apple, Google and Comcast stepped in and leveraged the weakness in the entertainment industry. They've reaped huge rewards, while the playing field is still steeply tilted against the individual musician.

What went wrong? First of all, digital media reinforced a trend in consumers' perception of intellectual property value that had already begun with LPs and tape. The average consumer believes that the right price for an album is between $10 and $15. But, it's gone beyond that with streaming and other forms of digital distribution. Many consumers believe that because they can obtain music for free, that music should be free. Unfortunately, that attitude tips the scales toward big businesses, who sell in large quantity. If you sell millions of copies of something, you are better equipped to lose a fraction of those shares to unpaid downloads. In contrast, the typical indie musician may sell 10s or 100s of copies of their album. If your fans don't pay you for all of those copies, you lose money on the release (you may lose money anyway, but you lose less if every copy is paid for).

Secondly, most of the online streaming and distribution services make it very difficult to stand out. For the Scattershock and Danger, Ltd. releases, I spent a lot of time making sure we had product available on iTunes, CDBaby and Bandcamp. I also went through the social networking services (Facebook, Myspace, etc.) and the music services (Last.fm, MOG, Spotify, Pandora, etc.) trying to make sure we have complete profiles and are well-represented on each service. I will discuss my specific experiences with some of these services in future postings, however, overall I found the digital music world to be just as restrictive to our indie releases as the old brick and mortar record industry. As a non-touring act, with a very small initial following, the services tended to push us into the "Who Cares?" category. We have minimal ratings, so we rank low in searches. On some services we don't have enough "something" to qualify for their flavor of "bands we sound like". In essence, the new digital distribution model still makes it easiest for major releases to get attention.

Generally speaking, I'm an optimist. I still believe that it's possible for the digital revolution to benefit the small indie artists. Much like a political revolution, however, the digital revolution has been co-opted by a new generation of big companies. For the revolution to eventually benefit indie artists, the consumer and the Internet will need further evolution and refinement. I am hopeful that eventually things will improve but, so far, the promise of digital music has fallen short.