The Meetup

I just got back from the Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill Tour Stop! Wooo! I just want to really say thanks to Tim for putting us on your map and taking the time to come by for a little chat.

In the faceless placeless world of the Internet, it was just great to be able to sit down in old theatre and just have a conversation with the man behind the curtain. Many of you reading may get the opportunity to see Tim sometime in your city. If you get the opportunity to do so, take it. Give Pandora a chance to be little more real.

I won't give away Tim's punchlines or tell his story. He's told the story to the papers and you can read that elsewhere. Let me just give you some impressions.

I would say Tim is musician at heart who just a few years ago, had a good idea, and now he's figured out just what to do with it.

With his unassuming nature and seemingly sincere naivete regarding all things internet, Tim is great front man for the Pandora band. I get the impression that what he cares mostly about is the music, the musicians, and their audience, and how to bring them together. More than once he spoke about how music can simply make people's lives better, break down barriers, make all of us a little more human. Tim seemed to be more fascinated with the power of music to pull fifty strangers into that old theatre than what the latest bells and whistles the next version of the player will have. Tim has a vision for the kind of company he wants to run, a company that takes care of its employees and delivers a product with a conscience that reflects the desires of real people behind the scenes and the listeners. He's hoping that if the company takes care of people, people will be drawn to the company because there will be a real connection. I think he's touched on something that has really been missing in the Web 2.0 land.

About the crowd, some were musicians turned in CD's from their band. One guy was one of original fans of the Music Genome Project going back before there as a Pandora. We had a statistician that wanted to know about reliability and validity rates among the music evaluators (good) others wanted to know what it was like to work there (torture (kidding)), how the company could make any money (it's not), why this or that feature wasn't available (just wait), how Pandora decided to play a certain song on their station (wisdom of the crowds), when will classical, world, or Latin music really become available (soon or eventually).

Tim was surprised to find out that a vast majority of folks wanted the next version of the player to include an "I'm Bored" button which would start a new station and just play something completely random from which the listener could start thumbing up/down to develop their station off that random root. The Music Genome Project folks may not realize just how much people just want to play with Pandora like a toy or use it as serious music analysis tool. One guy asked Tim to just let him dive in that music database somehow and just have at it.

Something I didn't realize is that your station tends to grow organically. If you think of your station like tree, a thumbs up will allow it to grow a new branch leading off to new opportunities, and a thumbs down will cut a branch off (a skip is neutral).

The real magic of Pandora is that it is about an idea, it's about the music and it's about people.

You may ask, where has Pandora been all these years? The idea of the Music Genome may have been just a few years ahead of it's time, but now Pandora has the potential to go wherever technology will take it.

Tim, thanks again and good luck on your travels.

P.S. He didn't give too much away regarding new features, except to stay tuned for something new within the next few days!