Pandora Radio and The Long Tail

We are living in the age of recommendation. If you spend any time shopping or searching online (and if you're reading this, I assume you do) you have probably been influenced by the recommendations of friends and strangers alike. Two recommendations I followed recently have not only given me enjoyment, but have gotten me thinking.

The first recommendation was to check out Pandora radio. I got an email from a friend (sorry, I don't remember which one) suggesting I go to their website and check it out. I did. And I loved it. Now, I'm hooked on it, play it almost every day at work and have gotten a number of other people hooked on it. What it is, if you haven't checked it out is a site that allows you to create your own online radio stations based on a particular band or song you like. You create a station around My Chemical Romance and not only do you get all their songs, you get songs that are by artists that have similar qualities and that people who like that band tend to also like. And as you go along, you can customize it further by tagging which songs that it plays are your favorites and which ones you don't ever want to hear again on that station.

This is great! I have fairly eclectic tastes and some of the artists I like aren't incredibly popular. For instance, I love happy ska music. I can never find a place to listen to just ska. I have Sirius satellite radio, but with all the sub genres there, they still don't have a ska station. On Pandora, I created a Less Than Jake station and a Reel Big Fish station. Both stations play bands that, like the featured artist, play upbeat, happy ska. Plus, I built another station around the song "Anthem" by Zebrahead. So, now instead of no place to find a steady diet of ska, I have three different online radio stations devoted to ska. The selection goes very deep, they even have my daughter's favorite band, a metal rock band from Japan called Dir en grey.

So, what's my point, other than to tell you about a good way to find music you like and discover music you never heard of before that is like the music you like? Well, that has to do with my other recommendation I took. Our newest account service person, Joanie, who taught eCommerce at Parsons School of Design gave me a book to read called The Long Tail. Many of you may have heard about this book and/or theory before, but it was new to me. I've been reading it and I find it fascinating. It talks about how the new economics of plenty, brought on mostly by the Internet are changing the way we look at economics. I know, economics doesn't sound interesting. But, it's all about things you probably experience every week if not every day.

Our economy, especially in the areas of things like movies, music, books and such has always been about the few hit makers. The old 20/80 rule – where 20% of the products make up 80% of the sales/profits/whatever. Now, when you have the Netflixs, iTunes and Amazons of the world, you can bring a seemingly infinite choice to the shopper. So, instead of only being able to choose from the 8,000 CDs in your local record store, you can choose from millions of tracks. And through following search and recommendations and "people who bought this also bought this" type of cues, we are all able to break out of the pop hits culture and find stuff we like in niches that aren't as popular, such as ska music. Pandora radio is an example of the long tail of music. There's a lot more to it than that, but I'm not going to get it to it here. If this intrigues you, I suggest you check out the book or the online radio site or both.

Mike McClure, Livin' in the recommendation age and loving it