Post BAR Camp Feedback on Pandora

It's been a pretty incredible weekend for Pandora and for me personally. BAR Camp was an amazing event; lots of really smart, passionate people coming together to share ideas. Fantastic.

Yesterday was my first chance to give a public demonstration of Pandora, and it was more fun than you can know to get to share it with this group of people.

The product was really well received, and there has been some great dialog at the conference (Scoble today called it "the talk of BAR Camp") and around the blogosphere since. Here's some of what's being said:

Michael Arrington: Dig into the Music Long Tail - Pandora
Robert Scoble: Pandora Rocks BAR Camp
Technoogle: Discover New Music with Pandora
Kevin Burton: Pandora: Music for the Long Tail
Craig Randall: Pandora Rocks
Vincent Oberle: Pandora, My New Radio

One of the things that's happened is that folks are starting to compare us to last.fm (for example this post: Finally: An Alternative to Last.fm). I'd like to go on the record as saying that I'm a big fan of what the guys at Last.fm / Audioscrobbler are doing. They uncover & expose people to all the social layers that music is wrapped up in and it's always interesting to know what your friends (and others like them) are listening to. I've certainly found new music this way; anyone that's out there trying to help people discover new music is definitely ok by me.

At Pandora we've just taken a totally different approach. With the Music Genome Project, we've built something that'’s based entirely on the sound of the music itself. We'll connect together a Metallica ballad with an Indigo girls song if they'’re a good fit musically. We think that's a unique take on the space, and that is creates really a delightful and totally unexpected listening experience. For my part, I think it compliments the great work going on at Last.fm / Audioscrobbler.

Want to listen? While we're currently in a "preview" mode, we're being very liberal with handing out invitations. If you'd like to listen to the service (for free I might add), drop me an email at tomconrad-at-gmail-dot-com and I'll make sure you get one ASAP.

Pandora Tip: For those of you who are already Pandora listeners, you can invite up to 25 of your friends to the preview without getting us in the loop at all. Just click the little triangle next to one of your stations and select "Share this station with a friend". We'll take care of sending an invite out immediately along with a link to your station.
(Tags: barcamp, pandora)