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Victor Maccharoli- Tom Conrad, Pandora Chief Technology Officer

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Music experts comprise panel

By RAY ESTRADA — May 22, 2009

A panel of music industry experts in Santa Barbara this week praised an innovation in online entertainment, but admitted it may soon lead to the demise of many conventional radio stations and retail record stores.

“I can’t come up with a good reason why we’re still broadcasting from (antenna) towers,” said Tom Conrad, chief technical officer for Pandora, which is an online service that allows users to put the name of their favorite musician into a search and come up with many high-quality recordings.

“Radio is slowly going bye-bye,” said panelist David Cremin, managing director of venture capital fund DFJ Frontier. Cremin, Conrad and others spoke to a crowd of about 75 listeners Wednesday night at the MIT Enterprise Forum Central Coast at the Cabrillo Arts Center in Santa Barbara.

The other panelists were mostly former record industry who had seen the rise of the industry in the 1960s to the demise as the result of the Internet and other factors in the mid-1990s.

Conrad filled in for Pandora founder Tim Westergren who started the company in 2000. Westergren was billed as the event’s keynote speaker, but was unable to attend.

Conrad said Pandora has changed the way fans can discover, listen to and acquire a huge variety of new and previously recorded music through an automated recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project.

That project allows more than 400 musical attributes to be considered when someone picks a song, Conrad said. These are combined into larger groups called focus traits. Conrad said there are 2,000 focus traits, including rhythm syncopation, key tonality, vocal harmonies and instrumental proficiency.

Users enter a song or artist, and the service plays selections that are musically similar. Users provide feedback - which Pandora takes into account for future selections.

While listening, users are offered the ability to buy the music at Amazon MP3 or iTunes.

Conrad said he Music Genome Project is the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. Fifty musician-analysts have been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting hundreds of musical details on every song, he said.

“It takes 20 to 30 minutes per song to capture all of the details that give each recording its sound -- melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals and  lyrics,” he said.

 The project team members continue their work to keep up with a flow of new music coming from studios, stadiums and garages around the country, Conrad said.

“I haven’t listened to Pandora,” said Budd Carr, a former music industry agent and film music producer. “But I will tonight.”

Hale Milgrim, former chief executive for Capitol Records, bemoaned the demise of conventional radio, “because if have a radio program.” Milgrim’s Sunday morning show, “Go to Hale,” airs on 99.9 KTYD FM and online.

Panelist John MacFarlane, founder and CEO of South Coast-based Sonos, Inc. said, “Pandora was a perfect partner for our system.

Sonos makes wireless multi-room music systems for digital homes. It teams up with other audio services such as iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster, Sirius, Audible and eMusic and more than 25,000 Internet radio stations to provide “plug-and-play” access to millions of songs and books.

Conrad explained that unlike many other companies, Pandora’s existence is spread mostly by word of  mouth with little marketing budgeting. He said the company’s founder holds small gatherings around the country to hear and discuss regional music and recording some of it for Pandora.

Pandora also receives hundreds of musical submissions over the Internet, but only some of them are used.

“Internet radio has been around a long time with many skeletons by the side of the road,” Conrad said. To survive, he said it must develop and advertising infrastructure in the midst of what he said might be called “a global economic collapse.”

However, Conrad said the ad situation at Pandora “is pretty rosy at the moment.” About 40 Pandora employees are selling ads, he said.

Soon, Conrad said, the company will offer Pandora One, which will be subscription based.

Issues including royalties paid to  artists remain an obstacle to Pandora’s success, Conrad admitted. However, he was optimistic that the company and the artists can adapt and resolve their differences.

Panelists noted that the music industry has reverted to what it was in the 1960s when many bands of musicians would settle for small pay just to  get their tunes recorded and tour playing them.

However, most panelists agreed, the big music companies – as we have known them -- are about to die.

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: 5/22/2009

I can think of a good reason - how about people in cars? You're full of it - radio is not all about music. People want a connection with their local area they want a local DJ they can call, they want local news, a connection, they want something that at least feels like its live. We dont want to listen to the same canned prerecorded stuff anyone in the world can hear online. Plus there is that problem of those "breaks" and pauses in the transmission due to bandwidth problems.

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: 5/22/2009

That's true - Listening to live radio with a real DJ makes you feel like you have company, whether at home or in the car..gives you a local flair when passing through a town. I cant remember feeling any lonelier and isolated than the time I crossed country with a rented car listening to only satelite radio...thats a good enough reason to keep my old fashioned antenna for me. Plus they work when the internet is down or the power is out. If you cant hink of any ogood reasons for broadcasting from antenna towers you're lying to promote your business or you're not thinking Tom.

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: 5/22/2009

Who wants to boot laptop just to listen to music?

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Radio problems : 5/25/2009

It's not just Pandora and other sources for radio-like content: It's that the commercial radio stations are suffering their worst ad sales in history. You can't put any radio programming on without paying the bills. And, the FCC no longer minds if just a couple of companies control most radio stations. It's becoming a monopoly and most listeners don't like it. I miss the radio of the 60s and 70s, which was much less programmed and formula-drive. But those days are gone and it's a brave new world that is in Pandora's box....

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