The Ponderings of Woodrow

Zany for Zune...

OK, I generally try to stay out of the consumer electronic blog frenzies that so often take over techmeme. But today I have to make an exception because I'm feeling giddy about the Zune. I'm a big consumer of music and podcasts (and have a looooonnnggg commute each day) and am a rabid iPod user. But I'm also a rabid radio listener. And I love to share music (hence my love for Pandora).

So Zune appeals to me. Because I can do all three in one device. Obviously the proof is very much in the pudding. It's not going to be easy for Microsoft to put a dent in the Apple iTuneopoly, but I have to give them credit for going big. They're trying to differentiate in multiple ways: wireless, embedded content, subscription pricing, different form factor.

Now, things like form factor (Zune is big), battery life (supposedly 12 hours but we've heard such claims before from other devices only to be disappointed) and the user interface of their music downloading service are all gating factors out of the gate potentially. Apple is on version 7.0 of iTunes, and has more versions of iPod than Disney had dalmatians.

But, at first blush, count me in as intrigued. Being a bit of a gadget guy, I'll certainly buy one with an understanding that I could end up back in the iPod universe in short order. But before today's launch, I would've given Microsoft's Zune about a 5% chance of luring me away from Apple. Now it's up to 50%.

Among the 1,000s of reviews on the Zune, I personally found stereogum's analysis the most comprehensive. stereogum was one of a handful of bloggers invited up to MSFT HQ last week for an official briefing, and he covers all the bases.

Note: At the time of this writing I, and/or funds I maintain discretionary control over, maintained a long equity position in MSFT but did not maintain a position (long or short) in AAPL. We also may, at times, carry derivative options on underlying positions as a hedge.

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Sirius gets serious about mobility...

As a Sirius Satellite subscriber, I've been patiently waiting for a mobile device that would allow me to listen to Sirius feeds live (the S50 only lets you listen to previously recorded content). Well, if we're to believe Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin, the wait is almost over. At the Convergence 2.0 conference, Karmazin pulled out a "beta" version and suggested the device would be available this summer. If he's right, I'm one giddy techhead.

Credit to Brian Ward at TechEffect for this story.

Note: At the time of this writing I maintained a long equity position in SIRI.

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A reason to hold off on that new PC...and I'm not talking about Vista

We've been looking at a new PC for the downstairs office in my home, and I wasn't sure if I should hold off until Windows Vista was released. But now with rumors of another delay, it seemed silly to wait. But that was until I saw today's news...If G-Unit isn't reason to wait, what is?

Pandora expands its feature set

Thanks to Mike at TechCrunch today for pointing out Pandora's latest feature upgrades. I'm an avid fan of Pandora and profiled the service last November.

From Pandora's blog itself:

We've just launched the latest update to Pandora. While we're constantly making little tweaks and improvements here and there, tonight's update was a big one and I'm devoting five posts to covering the details. Click through to read all the details on what we're launching today:

New Favorites and Sharing Features
Pandora RSS Feeds (Beta)
Fit, Finish and Polish
Keyboard Control
Pandora for Your Site

We're very excited to have released the latest version of Pandora for all of you to play with. We'd love to know what you think -- leave a comment here or drop us an email at pandora-support@pandora.com. We read everything.

It's great to see Tim, Tom and the rest of Pandora proactively addressing user requests. They're not done tweaking [here are some of the things I'd love to see], but this is a nice counter-move to the buzz last.fm has been getting of late.

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Pandora: Right Up My Alley

A few years ago, Tim Westergren and a group of friends began tinkering with the idea that music could be scientifically broken down into components [much like the human genome] and started the Music Genome Project. Over the last five years, they isolated more than 400 musical elements and cataloged more than 10,000 artists into the database. Westergren then launched Savage Beast Technologies in an attempt to monetize their collective initiative and found initial success as the recommendation engine in kiosks at some brick and mortar music retailers. This year, the company re-branded itself Pandora Music and launched a direct-to-consumer web-based streaming music service which got profiled by several notable bloggers, including TechCrunch. More recently, Pandora made news for getting a $12 million Series C round of funding and launching a free, advertising based version of its application.
 

Here are the things I most appreciate about Pandora...

• I'm a music nut...by the time I graduated college I owned close to 1,000 CDs [or approximately 15,000 .mp3s in the post-Apple world]; ten years later that collection has close to doubled and I'm officially one of those people who can't even tell you whether I own certain albums anymore. Pandora is a way to extend my quest for new music in a far more intuitive and intelligent manner than traditional recommendation engines.
• My tastes are eclectic...it's hard to find a genre I don't have some fondness for to some degree. I would say about 40% of the time I listen to "hip hop" in the broader sense, but there are moments when listening to Sigur Ros makes me happy, while the next moment Morris Day and the Time is exactly what the iPod ordered. The proverbial "whatever floats my boat" is in full play here.
• It's a "long tail" business model...This is the definition of a "long tail" business. Allowing individuals to create personalized music experiences regardless of the size of their audience. Instead of having five to ten radio stations to choose from, we can have tens of thousands. Much like the blogging world, it doesn't matter if anyone else on the Earth likes your station, as long as you do.
  
• Integration...With one click of a button, I can buy any song or album from iTunes or Amazon. That's convenience and a masterful way for Pandora to monetize their hard work. If I create a station and Pandora introduces me to songs that "fit" my preferences but are new to me, you can be sure I'm going to buy them. But making that purchase easy for "non techies" is essential and they're on their way to accomplishing just that.
• It's easily shared...I can create entire stations and send them to friends and they don't have to be subscribers to listen to my station. Pandora provides a customized URL of your personalized stream. For example, to listen to my MellowHop station.
• Portability...If you've got access to the Web and an audio source, you've got access to your Pandora stations.

But with all things, there is room for improvement. Features I would still like to see:

1. The ability to tag songs, playlists, stations more dynamically...tagging is a critical component of the social networking movement and I would like to see Pandora embrace the process more fully. For example, I would love to be able to tag a song similar to the way I might tag something on the web via del.icio.us. This could serve as yet another way for personalize the recommendation experience.
2. The ability to download my stations and preferences directly into iTunes and have it dynamically add purchase songs that aren't in my iTunes library while recognizing [and not purchasing] songs that are already populated into my collection...this is no small technical feat but would make the service worth subscribing to for a great many people, in my estimation.
3. Integration of video streams during playing...it seems that virtually every song has a music video with it now. Much like the iPod Video, it would be great if you could access a premium version of Pandora that streams videos versus just the song.
4. The ability to skip songs...Pandora currently limits the number of songs you may skip in a given hour of listening; which can be annoying if a) you dislike a string of songs or b) you've already heard a song recently. While I understand the business decision that went into putting a limit here, I would like to see a premium service that allows unlimited skipping.
5. Expanding the playlist!...Although the Genome project features 10,000 artists, I'm not convinced that anywhere close to that many are available on the streaming service at present. My guess is that Pandora is still getting clearance from certain labels, but they need to do that, quickly in my view. More songs = more choice, more customization + more chances to expose listeners to as-yet-unheard music.
6. An advanced way of delineating...Pandora currently offers a simple "I like it, I don't like it" way of rating songs. This is far too simplistic for a service driven by 400+ variables and hundreds of thousands of songs.

Related Articles:

• Opening Pandora's Box
• Pandora and Persistence [Dave Hornik]
• Unraveling Music's DNA [WSJ]

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