[solaris]

In exclusive interviews for his biweekly trends column, PM's senior tech editor finds out why the creator of Pandora might have to shut down if it wants to make a point to labels whose best interests are playing out in Washington—and whether Apple or Microsoft might have to bail out the Web's favorite personalized music service, even as they unveil their own.


In the past few weeks, it would seem as if Microsoft and Apple have simultaneously found the next big thing in music: computer-assisted music discovery.

Random shuffling may be a decent method for navigating one's way through a music collection, but it is just as likely to follow up a Bach fugue with Fall Out Boy as with Beethoven. The new iTunes 8 software, which Steve Jobs unveiled at Apple's "Let's Rock" event last week, comes with a "Genius" feature that, when activated, sends information about its users' libraries to Apple servers.

Once in Apple's cloud, a user's preferences are algorithmically analyzed alongside the information from other users, which helps offer suggestions from the Apple store (for purchase, of course) or automatically create a playlist of similar songs from a user's own library.

With the latest update to the software for its Zune players, meanwhile, Microsoft also allows for computerized music discovery based on customers' listening habits. Subscribers to Zune Marketplace get the most of this feature, as monthly subscriptions (which might still save the music business themselves) allow them to simply download most of the suggested songs that appeal to them without having to make a new purchase each time.

But just as this form of serendipitous music discovery is catching on, the company that popularized it may be headed for the technological trash bin. Pandora, the Internet radio station that creates a customized channel for each listener based on his or her musical taste, has to pay a royalty on every song it serves up—and song by song, it's putting them out of business.

"The raw truth of it is that the [music royalty] rates that were published about a year ago aren't affordable for us, or for any other webcaster for that matter," Pandora founder Tim Westergren tells me. (Full disclosure: Popular Mechanics's parent company, Hearst Corporation, is an investor in Pandora.)

Full story here: Pandora Royalties Could Kill Internet Radio - Interview With Founder of Pandora - Popular Mechanics