iTunes vs. Pandora
For a little while now my Twitter feed has been getting flooded by tweets regarding #Rdio, #Pandora, #EventBrite and other online services. All of these services provide users with tools to our normal everyday activities easier, and more fun.
The internet is becoming smarter, people are becoming smarter, and more and more internet services are replacing programs, applications, or even people. This includes Twitter, creating conversation quickly and easily, Pandora, searching and listening to music you love, Rdio, giving full access to a huge library of music for a minimal fee each month, and EventBrite, providing tools to manage and promote events. The most popular lately, Pandora Radio. Standard music libraries (stored locally on a computer) are slowly (and I mean slowly) fading away. Thanks to many of the online music services out there, like Pandora, we have the ability to listen to music for free, whenever we want. The one thing that sets Pandora apart from the rest is it’s ability to accurately (it’s actually not bad) predict what kind of music you like.
Pandora has taken one of the most commonly frequented mediums, the internet, and established an amazingly smart online music service. With over 48 million users (and growing) Pandora is taking over a small piece of the music industry. People don’t ask, “what kind of music do you own?” instead they ask, “Do you listen to Pandora?” It’s fantastic to see a company surviving in the music industry, especially with iTunes making music purchasing so easy.
I commend the people at Pandora, and can’t wait to see what other innovative online tools they build. Will Pandora, or someone else, replace the local music library someday? What kind of features would you want that would help you make the switch?
Let me know.
Thanks,
Chuck
