Monthly Main Meeting Highlights
Welcome to the May 2013 Main Meeting
Tonight we opened Pandora’s box and it played Glenn Miller.
Jane Huxley, the Managing Director of Pandora Internet Radio Australia and New Zealand, came along to show us the next level of entertainment.
We all know of free to air radio and TV, well Pandora is free to internet user radio.
We all know of free to air radio and TV, well Pandora is free to internet user radio.
Pandora was founded out of the Music Genome Project, by Tim Westergren. This was a method of catagorizing music based on an algorithm that identified 450 main attributes common to all recorded music.
The company had a rocky start in the late 1990s after losing funding due to the collapse of capital available for internet companies. New funding was found to form a music delivery system based on the genome project and Pandora Radio went on air, or that is, onto the internet, in 2005.
Ricky Gleave was also along to drive the computer and we had some
lively times seeing how to connect and drive the program to create your own personal
music stations.
This photo was twitted By Ricky at
https://twitter.com/GleaveRick/status/339319634765414400/photo/1
To create your own personal stations, you will need to register
with an e-mail and password. Pandora will ask for your gender, your postcode, and your
date of birth.
I got about an hour of free radio before I was asked to register.
While Pandora is ad free in Australia at the moment, advertising
will be heard around every 15 minutes for about a minute. That will pay for the
royalties paid to the performers and composers. In Australia, Pandora pays royalties
to Apra and Amcos for all the music it plays. That means both performers and composers
get a real financial benefit for their music.
Finding your favourite music is simple. Type in your favourite
artist, genre, or composer, and Pandora downloads the music you requested immediately.
Based on the choices you make, Pandora creates a radio station
with your style of music in mind.
The music is chosen at random by Pandora for example along with
Glenn Miller, came Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and other great swing bands.
You can have up to 99 stations playing a wide range of music. You
can personalise the music further by clicking the ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ buttons.
Your choices go into the database and you will never hear the
tunes you don’t like again.
If you like what you hear you can even buy the album by clicking
“buy” and Pandora will direct you to either iTunes or Amazon.
Jane also spoke about the bandwidth to run Pandora. Audio has a
thin band and should run to about 140 megabits per hour. Their help files suggest a
bandwidth of 150kbps. If you like the idea and are willing to pay a subscription, you
can get Pandora One, a premium service with no ads and a high quality audio stream.
Pandora is not restricted to
the PC. You can download an application for iPhone, Android and Windows 8 smart
phones.
You can find all the details and sign up at
The Raffle
Jane and Rick brought a number of goodies which including three
sets of earphones to listen to Pandora.
There was also a redraw of last week’s raffle prize the fabulous
Tom Tom Go Live
Here are a few of the lucky winners.
Ronald
John and John
James and Paul, who got to take home the Pandora T shirt
s
Dennis and
John is taking home the fabulious glove that gives you touch screen control without getting your hands cold. Alex found it at the "Reject Shop'.
Alex demonstrates the glove in Q & A.
and the door prize went to
Bruce.
