New discoveries in Pandora

Pandora: In the middle of music



Pandora is an Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project. The listeners start by entering a song or artist that they would like to hear and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. When a song comes on that you like or dislike you press the thumbs up or down to tell Pandora for future reference. Pandora is available on the Internet and also on all Smartphones including Blackberry's, iPhone's and Droids through an application. Pandora is an ad-supported website.

Unlike many ad-supported music websites, Pandora cannot play music on-demand which is why the records labels support them. According to Russ Crupnick in the article above (a senior industry analyst for entertainment at the NPD Group) online radio drives in a 41 percent increase in paid downloads. We then ask why a free internet radio music source such as Pandora brings up the revenue of paid music? Because Pandora introduces people to new music due to not playing music on-demand. Like I said earlier Pandora picks songs or artists that are like the one you initially picked. So this can lead you to new artists which you omay or may not like and then want to buy so you can listen to it on-demand.

People such as Tim Westergren, the company’s co-founder and chief strategy officer are hoping to drive music sales in other ways too. Such as the idea of when you hear a new artist that you like, you can pick the thumbs up and then later down the road recieve notifications of when the artist will be in town. In the future they hope that the record labels will let Pandora turn to On-Demand.

New advertising traffic reports

Billboard traffic reports

I don't think there are any drivers out there that can say they don't mind traffic. Traffic is one of the most irratating situations to be in. When you step out of your home you are traveling to go somewhere, so majority of the time if you hit traffic it makes you late to your destination. I can only speak for myself when I say that I never remember or have the time to check traffic updates before I leave to go somewhere. At times when I am already in traffic I will go to an AM news station in hopes to find out why I'm stuck in the situation and hopefully find out that it will clear up in the near furture, although that is rarely the case.

With new technology, some billboards are now digital. With this advancement in billboards companies such at Clear Channel can now use a single board for more then one advertisement therefore reeling in much more money for that single billboard location. With the ability to change an ad within seconds this billboard can also be used to send out crucial information to travelers. Clear Channel has come up with the idea to broadcast traffic information on the billboards to travelers. This program will start in Chicago and be tested for a 13-week run on 19 billboards around the Chicago area. These billboards will feature traffic reports and regulary updated lottery information.

This new advertising development is great idea for Clear Channel. Clear Channel already provides traffic reports through their radio stations, internet, television and navigation systems so integrating this information on the billboards is no big deal at all. It's something that other companies have not thought of yet and could potentially be a great way for people to dodge traffic before finding it themselves. Although there could be some downfalls, for example getting on a highway and hitting traffic before seeing the billboard. Or people thinking that reading this information off a billboard could be distracting and cause accidents. But with that being said in my opinion, I think it's only beneficial. If they see the traffic news while already in traffic they would have been there anyway. So at the end of the day I do think this is a great idea and will hopefully help people out!