Pandora: Internet Radio – The Music Genome Project®
Pandora is one of the most advanced internet radio websites. Instead of duplicating a real world radio station, and adapting it for use online, the have used web 2.0 technologies to put the control in the users hands. The way that the founders have done this is by creating the Music Genome Project®. They have analyzed tens of thousands of songs to identify up to 400 musical elements and characteristics of each song which included everything from “melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony.” By doing this, Pandora can accurately recommend a song and artist similar to what you are interested in listening to.
Pandora is simple to use and provides free accounts. With a free account you will be able to create and customize many stations with music from as many artists as you would like. These stations are very simple to set up; all you would need to do is click on the “create a new station” button. Once the text box comes up you enter in the name of the song or artist you are interested in listening to. This will then be your new station where you can start listening to and rating the music selection. These free accounts are supported by the advertisements place on them. There is also a song skip restriction placed on each station.
To remove the song skip restrictions and advertisements you can sign up for a premium Pandora account for $36 per year. The advertisements place on the free accounts and brand sponsored websites provide the funding to keep Pandora available as a free service. This web 2.0 technique is ideal to bring a large number of users to your site in order to increase profits through advertising revenue and premium subscriptions.
Pandora has also recently expanded to include a video series that covers concerts, in studio interviews, and a section entitled Music 101. This enables them to utilize partnerships with youtube to bring new users and funding to the Music Genome Project®. They have also created accounts on other popular social networking sites such as Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook to connect with their current and future users.
Newseum: The World’s Most Interactive Museum
This week’s “Hot Technologies” video was on Newseum.org, which is the online presence of the Newseum located in Washington, D.C. The video focused on the Today’s Front Page section of the Website. Today’s Front Page is an interactive database of 600+ Daily Newspapers. There are many ways to search through the database, which include a Top 10 list and a Map you can use to navigate to the newspaper you are interested in. A different editor compiles the Top 10 list each day. The daily editor has the option of focusing on the headlines, photos, innovative design or anything else the feel helps that page stand out from the rest. As I browsed through the front pages for April 29, 2009, a majority of the stories in the United States and Mexico were related to the swine flu and President Obama’s First 100 days as president. The Top 10 list has a different focus with the list composing of front pages featuring articles of Arlen Specter’s switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party. All profiles of users in the social technographics profile system can benefit from the content featured. With the creators consisting of the respective newspaper that the front page is from, they are reaching a wider audience than they would otherwise with the printed version alone. As well as being a collection of sources for spectators to review it is also a database for creators to use as credible sources for their blogs and postings. Newseum.org features links at the bottom of each article to their Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages, that way the joiners of these sites can link to their page to interact with their profile. As opposed to most Web 2.0 sites, Newseum.org’s users will also consist of the inactives group in the way that the Web 2.0 applications featured on this site are not the main focus. This site is great for every range of internet user from people looking for news in a specific location to people researching what the most common stories are related to.
