Pandora Trying Out Invasive Commercial Breaks 244
Nathan Halverson writes "The popular online radio service Pandora.com has added brief commercial interruptions to its service. Pandora says this is a trial and is targeted to a subset of listeners at this point. In one case, a brief ad for the Fox TV show 'Lie To Me' interrupted the music stream for about 15 seconds after ten songs had initially played, and the same commercial interrupted 22 songs later. 'But [Pandora's] founder promised the site will never carry as many audio ads as broadcast radio, despite the fact it pays substantially higher royalty fees to the recording industry.'"
Re:Can't be accessed outside of US (Score:5, Informative)
"We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative."
plus there are plenty of alternatives that do work, i use lastfm in the uk, works ace
Hulu does this and everybody doesn't mind that... (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, this is no big deal. According to the article, "On average, people will hear a 15-second commercial about every two hours, Westergren said, adding that it is a targeted ad campaign and not everyone is hearing the commercials." Other 'free' services have been doing it for ages, most notably Hulu.com. Plus I agree with the above comments... fuck country-specific services on the Internet and fuck those royalty fees. And yes... I'm looking at you the most RIAA...
Re:We need a spam filter for radio (Score:4, Informative)
I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out adds (without making too many mistakes). I've always wondered why this doesn't exist for TV.
Sorry to disappoint you, but you don't need to pay for MythTV [mythtv.org]. From the features list:
Re:Whatever, it's a great service (Score:5, Informative)
Bands who want to be known give their songs to a station which broadcasts it. Band becomes famous, and people pay for the concert. But then again, I also believe in Utopia :D
That model does actually exist out there on the net -- the billboard at http://www.themusicwellhome.co.uk/ [themusicwellhome.co.uk] for instance.
Re:Whatever, it's a great service (Score:5, Informative)
> Hmm... of course the station needs to get money from somewhere. I always thought that record companies pay stations to play their songs. Radio is the best add for a song (and music is a product that is advertised on radio). Why advertise anything else when radio is almost 100% advertisement? :D
Um, it's kinda crazy, but this is known as "payola". It's not illegal for the labels to pay stations to play their songs, BUT the station has to disclose that they were paid to play the song.
Evidently, kids (who are the primary consumers of music) tend to tune out things they know are ads. So, the record labels have gone to extraordinary lengths (and have been caught MULTIPLE times) to pay radio stations to play their music WITHOUT saying they were paid to play it (easiest way to know a radio station was paid to play a song, the DJ will say it's the most requested song).
The labels are trying really hard to get radio stations to pay royalties, so they can get some of their payola money back...
That's OK (Score:3, Informative)
They get their ad revenue for sending them, not for you listening.
Filtering them out can't be too hard and won't cost them. Just like AdBlock downloads the ads but doesn't display them.
Re:We need a spam filter for radio (Score:3, Informative)
Yup, and for which you pay a hefty fee every year for, otherwise the detector vans come round and scan your ass (do they still have those, haven't been in Blighty for nigh on 8 years ?).
£140 a year. The alternative seems to be that the money comes out of general taxation.
It's a similar situation with the cable TV here. While they don't run "traditional" commercials as such, they still manage to interrupt the show every 15 minutes with pointless trailers for other shows which will be airing during the week.
The BBC never interrupt a show. Any trailers are shown between programmes.
SO I don't think you EVER get a full 60 minutes of programming in each hour.
You get about 58 minutes though.
08:00.00 trailer for a program
08:01.00 screen saying what's on now/next on a few channels
08:01.39 programme starts
08:59.30 programme ends
08:59.31 now/next again
Re:Hulu does this and everybody doesn't mind that. (Score:1, Informative)
On average, people will hear a 15-second commercial about every two hours
If you believe that then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Sure, it'll start that way so they're not, technically, lying but then they'll boil the frog [wikipedia.org].
Re:We need a spam filter for radio (Score:4, Informative)
From what I've heard the detector vans were an urban myth. They do now us a database to work out who hasn't bought a license, and then knock on the door now and again to check up on you.
I don't have a TV, so I know how TV licensing behave. Enforcement is mostly based on fear. If you aren't on the licence database they will write to you every three-ish months with one of a rotating set of letters. These say things like 'WARNING AGAINST UNLAWFUL ACTION', or look like fake bills, or tell you you've been added to their enforcement list and that 'Enforcement Officers' will visit in compliance with PACE (and, presumably, the Geneva conventions and the nuclear test ban treaty....). They give you a phone number they want you to ring to get yourself on a database of people declaring they have no TV. Then they write to you and say they're going to visit you anyway (and then don't) and start the letters again six months later. Meanwhile they're running (billboard) adverts saying things like 'last year we caught 157,000 licence dodgers' and 'seven people in Ebscombe Close don't have a licence'.
In eight years I've met exactly one Enforcement Officer (they're private sector contractors with no special powers). Conversation with them go like this: Him: Do you have a television. You: No. Him: Can I come in? You: No. Him: That's all I need to know [goes away].
It appears they only catch people by knocking on the door and hearing a television. They have no power of entry, and need some shred of evidence of a crime to get a warrant from a magistrate. Besides, I get the impression they can't be bothered and are quite keen on getting through their list ASAP.
BTW, you need a licence for watching television services at or nearly at the same time as it's being broadcast. This applies to using computers for that, too. But you can watch them later with no licence at all. (I don't do either, ICYWW, if I wanted to watch TV I'd have a TV).
Re:Whatever, it's a great service (Score:2, Informative)
Thanks for the correction. It's a silly mistake.
Regarding point 2, the electromagnetic spectrum goes from Gamma rays, through X-rays, UV, visible light, IR, to radio waves. Those are all photons. And they're also all waves.
It's just that we like to think of radio as waves, and X-ray and gamma as particles. In the end, all of them are both: both wave and particle.
Re:Whatever, it's a great service (Score:4, Informative)
I'd rather give Pandora a few seconds of my listening time for ads than pay them a subscription.
And I'd rather give Pandora a few dollars of my paycheck than listen to their ads.
Maybe this "entitlement generation" people keep talking about is just weary of being pestered by constant advertising shitting on every second of their lives. I feel like I'm walking downtown and every block there's a hobo with his hand out who won't take no for an answer. When I'm listening to music- actually listening, not just hearing it for background, it's because I'm trying to turn my mind off and enjoy a precious few minutes of free time. Between responsibilities at work and at home, being on call, being dad to a two year old, these minutes I have, say when I'm driving alone or wasting time in the garage with music playing, or just staying up for half an hour after everyone goes to bed... These moments are near sacred to me, and to be interrupted by a stupid commercial for shit I don't care about is infuriating.
Pandora was the answer for me, but if they start advertising I'm going back to "stealing" mp3s.
Vans were certainly possible - and trivial. (Score:3, Informative)
From what I've heard the detector vans were an urban myth.
While I can't state authoritatively whether the vans were a myth, the technology was real. Also simple and cheap.
Television and radio receivers of the era were all superheterodyne - down-converting a signal to a low and standard "intermediate frequency" ("IF"), where a fix-tuned amplifier/filter combination did most of the boosting and rejection of out-of-band signals before the detector stage. (Fixed-tuned filters are easier than variable-tuned and filter selectivity is in terms of a percentage of center frequency so lower frequencies are easier to band-pass filter than higher.)
The down-conversion was done by "mixing" (multiplying, or using other non-linear approximations) the incoming signal with a sine wave at a frequency from a "local oscillator" ("LO"), displaced from the signal of interest by the IF frequency. (Yes I know "IF frequency" is redundant.)
This "mixer" stage is preceded by a small number (one or two) of variable-tuned amplifier stages - which reject the other "image" (incoming signals on the "other side" of the local oscillator frequency) and to provide SOME attenuation of the local oscillator energy in the mixer as it "leaks" toward the antenna. The isolation is enough to keep the local oscillator frequency from radiating enough energy (through the antenna or out through the box or other wiring) to jam other channels - but far too little to keep it from being trivially detectable by a radio tuned to (or sweeping across) its frequency.
So it's trivial to put a "panoramic" (sweeping) receiver in a van, with a directional antenna on the roof, and hunt down the local oscillator radiation of any receiver that is operating and tuned to a BBC channel.
This technology predates the TV tax. It was used in WWII (at least by the Germans and probably by the British as well) to hunt down receivers tuned to the enemy's news outlets (which carried embedded messages to embedded spies) and "numbers stations" (which carried encrypted messages ditto).
They do now us a database to work out who hasn't bought a license, and then knock on the door now and again to check up on you.
Much simpler in an era of cheap computing and document copying. But more intrusive. Detection is STILL possible and cheap. So I'd be surprised if they knocked on the door before checking to see if there was a receiver running.