I dig music.
I adore Drum and Bass.
For the past few weeks I've been listening to Pandora's Drum and Bass station non stop. My listening habits are an odd juxtaposition of spacing out while reading at home, or more commonly background noise while working with absolute focus. I'm a paid subscriber to Pandora because I appreciate continuous listening without interruption1.
The stations I curate on Pandora have introduced me to dozens of incredible music artists, including albums outside of DnB like the music scores to Halo 1-3, and Clint Mansell's Requiem for a Dream sound track (my recent purchases show up on this page for the curious).
In the past month I've spent hundreds of dollars on music, and am an incorrigible junky. The problem is that Pandora is only getting a tiny fraction of my purchase action. My preferred buying route is Amazon mp3s, with iTunes a secondary backup. But the iOS app only brings up the iTunes buying option. Beyond not providing my preferred purchasing method (could be contractual on iOS devices), many of the albums aren't available on iTunes so I have no choice but to go elsewhere.
What I suggest is that Pandora needs more than a placeholder to iTunes or Amazon. They need their own music store, and premium streaming accounts which allow unlimited access to songs, playback mode, and local caching. Their current business model is losing too much of the value that their incredible music pattern matching product is capable of generating.
What do you think?
What are your music listening and purchase habits?
- Woe be to advertisers who take our time without permission