Pandora Radio and Newspapers

Last night while I was cleaning up the kitchen I plugged my iPhone into the living room stereo and cranked up Pandora radio. When I was done cleaning I sat down on the couch with a beer while my wife joined me with a glass of wine. The TV stayed off and we just listened to music. It was a great change of pace that turned out to be a wonderfully relaxing evening.

I thought to myself several times how awesome Pandora is. A commercial free radio station built just for me delivered right to my living room stereo. Pandora is the epitome of what the internet should be, all about me. Exactly what I want, when I want it and how I want it with no strings attached.

This is why I laughed so hard when I downloaded the XM Radio app. I already subscribe to XM through the unit in my car. I think I pay around $12 a month. That price is going up however because the music industry wants more royalties so it will probably be around $15 a month. Trust me when I say I’m real close to dropping the service because of this. So when I fired up the iPhone app for the first time and I got stopped because my subscription isn’t good enough. I need to pay an additional $3 a month for online access. I laughed my ass off and then got really pissed off. Three more bucks a month for a service I already pay for, just a different delivery method? They have lost their minds! Pandora is ten times better then XM and it’s totally free.

I guess some people just don’t get it and are destined to fail. Which brings me to the newspaper industry. (LOL, nice transition eh?) What if papers adopted the Pandora philosophy of what, how and when I want it with no strings attached? Let’s tackle the money issue first. I don’t mind banner ads as long as they don’t expand, speak or move around. Just stay in the sidebar like a good ad should and I’m cool with that. There should also only be one to two ads max. Newspaper websites look like a flea market right now. It’s disgusting! I say clear it all out and charge a premium for that single sidebar placement. A single quality ad that is targeted for me might actually get me to click on it. What a concept, advertising that works!

How about the actual content? The very best part of Pandora is that I can define my radio station. I give a thumbs up to a song and it plays more like it while a thumbs down will avoid similar songs. It is constantly learning what I want. Could papers do this? Could they create content that the user actually wants and then constantly refine it until the user essentially has their own custom newspaper? How great would that be! Have a thumbs up and down on every story so that I can tell the paper, feed me more stories like this and less stories like that. Don’t take those results and apply them to everyone, just to me. Everyone would get exactly what they want and how great is that! The technology to do it is there but the mindset of the newsroom isn’t. Don’t tell me what I should be reading, I’ll tell you what to feed me and if you don’t like it then goodbye.

With so many things all competing for our attention today, it’s silly to think that users are going to continue to put up with products and services that don’t deliver exactly what the user wants, when they want and in a medium that is convenient. Look at how DVR has taken this concept and changed TV. Podcasts and Pandora are doing this right now to radio. So when will newspapers change?