Yes, that’s one of the more random headlines I’ve written, but look — I wasn’t the one who said it. Executives from Spotify and Turntable.fm really did compare themselves to popular musicians, and Pandora and TastemakerX took turns, too.
All four companies spoke at the closing panel at ad:tech conference in San Francisco yesterday, and they were all instructed by moderated Brad Berens to choose a single musician or band to represent their company. (The Beatles and Elvis were out, because they’re too obvious.) Here’s what they said:
And yes, there was some talk about advertising models too, though mostly in generalities. The most challenging question actually came from an audience member, who asked about what Pandora was doing to ensure that advertising (which makes up the vast majority of its revenue) could cover for its expensive royalty payments, “because I want you to be around for a very long time.” Browning noted that the majority of Pandora listeners are exposed to advertising, but she also acknowledged that Pandora pays higher royalty rates than radio.
“We are happy, and I want reiterate that, happy to pay our artists.” Browning said.
Turntable.fm is a project of Seth Goldstein and Billy Chasen, the two guys who brought us Stickybits. Users in each dance room has an avatar and can chat with each other. Users can create their own playlist and get up in the DJ booth to battle it out. Turntable.fm a social music platform that encourages hanging out with people and discovering music. If a DJ is playing a song you like, you can add it to your playlist, buy...
Spotify has created a lightweight software application that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums with virtually no buffering delay. It was launched in the fall of 2008 and had approximately 10 million users by September 2010. Spotify offers streaming music from major and independent record labels including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Users download Spotify and then log onto their service enabling the on-demand streaming of music. Music can be browsed by artist, album, record...
TastemakerX is social gaming platform that allows users to build portfolios of personal tastes and share it to their social graph. The TastemakerX Music mobile app enables fans to discover artists, trends and inspiration; compete against other tastemakers; and share experiences through geo-tagging, commentary and photo sharing. Unlike the broad social platforms or search engines, TastemakerX takes a vertical approach to the surfacing of trends tuned to individual tastes (first vertical is music). It was built as a game, like...
Pandora Radio is an internet radio service, recommendation service, and the custodian of the Music Genome Project. Users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. Users provide feedback on approval or disapproval of individual songs, which Pandora takes into account for future selections. While listening, users are offered the ability to buy the songs or albums at various online retailers. As part of the Music Genome Project, over...
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