Recently a site called Pandora began life. It had a great concept: you tell it the name of a band you like and it builds you a personal ‘radio station’. Tracks which it thinks you might like are queued up for you to hear.
What made Pandora more than just a radio station which guessed your taste was that it was adaptive. While a song was playing, you could tell Pandora that you liked or disliked it. Pandora would take this into account when picking music in the future. If you had said you didn’t like it, Pandora would skip the rest of the track so you didn’t have to listen to it.
Last time I visited Pandora, I found that it prevents you skipping more than a few (five?) tracks per hour. The message which told me this also said that it was due to licensing. They are not allowed to let users skip more than a small number of tracks per hour. The site suggested that I set up a new ‘station’ if I want to get around this restriction. I didn’t think that was a very good workaround, considering I’d spent so long teaching the one I was listening to.
I’m sure many people have found new bands on Pandora and will have gone out and bought their music. If they’re like me, though, they won’t be back. I liked Pandora because it let me find and listen to music which was to my personal taste. Now it forces me to listen to music which isn’t. This is why I’m talking about it in the past tense.
The record companies have shot themselves in the feet again with this stupid licensing agreement.