Pandora raises $12M more to help you find music
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Crosslink Capital led the $12 million third round, with participation from existing investors Labrador Venture Partners, Selby Venture Partners and WaldenVC, according to VentureWire (sub required), and PE Week (scroll down).
Still very little word about how the company is doing, and the company has now raised a total of $22.3 million. But creating a search engine like this seems to make a lot of sense. Pandora is now partnering with retailers like Best Buy, where folks can use the service in stores. We last mentioned Pandora here. If you try it out, let us know what you think in comments. We haven't seen any real consensus form yet about this.
http://www.siliconbeat.com/cgi-bin/mt331/mt-tb.cgi/896
Links to blogs that reference this entry:
It's Raining VCs, Hallelujah, It's Raining VC
Excerpt:
$12 M pour Pandora...
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Un bon deal pour Pandora (cf mon pr̩c̩dent post)...Un vrai service innovant orient̩ Web 2.0...
Bie
Tracked: November 22, 2005 3:34 PM
I'm giving up Radio/CD
Excerpt: After having given up my cable subscription, I'm moving on to other mediums - Here's one of those - How did I live without it technologies... Moreover, its one of the (few) ideas I even envisioned creating several years ago
Tracked: April 28, 2006 3:40 AM
I think Pandora is a great way to find new music. I subscribed the third day it was open to the public and never looked back. I actually just had Tim Westergren (founder) on my podcast (www.ventureweek.com) about music tech which will be released tonight (Monday). I think that a lot of questions are answered on the show. Most notable we talk about how people will find music in the future and how social networks are playing a big role in music discovery. Sorry for the shameless self promo but I really believe the show will add some great info to the discussion.
Eric Olson on November 21, 2005 6:27 AMComment link
Let me preface this with that fact that i'm a big fan of pandora.
What am i missing here folks? How are they any different then any of the other music discovery services like live365, launch, and 100's more? Visually sure they are different, slickness -check, fun-check, but c'mon, $12 million different? doubt it!
Who wants to go into bestbuy and listen to unknown music on some terminal? the idea is spot on but the application of such discovery technology will not work in a retail environment.
looks like everyone in the valley has their bubblicious going full on.
Dave on November 21, 2005 8:02 AMComment link
Yesterday I spent a lot of time with Pandora and last.fm. Last.fm has a communal feeling, where Pandora seems clinical and distant. AI bots running around parsing my every click. How cool is it that a little window, sliding album art and a clunky interface can land you $22 million?
Obviously it's the backend system that contains all the smarts, but last.fm is better-looking and much more fun user experience overall. We've got API's to add our playlists to our blogs and lots of stuff to explore on the site. Pandora give you That Clunky Little Box. Quick, someone make a Dashboard widget.
I'm busy feeding 5,000 songs into last.fm, and need more time with Pandora, but I have to say that I like the last.fm experience better because it's doing all the work for me via the iTunes plug-in. Where is the Applescript so I can just upload my iTunes XML file and not actually have to play each song?
Overall, I would hazard to guess the AI bots in Pandora will probably provide me with better recommendations, because they ignore what killed the original Firefly, I want new stuff, not the popular music getting more popular just beacuse more people download it or say they like it.
Pandor's radio concept needs refinement. I'll pay the same as I pay for Flickr to be able to listen to the channels without getting those "you've skipped enough music today" alerts.
David Evans on November 21, 2005 12:06 PMComment link
Pandora is fantastic! Why isn't everyone raving about this site? It's ultimate attribute is it's simplicity. When I go the site it starts playing the last station I left, no need to SIGN IN. Why can't every website be this simple and fun? Pandora makes internet radio redundant. Ten bucks a month for Sirrius?? Sssssh.
Terry Evans on November 22, 2005 3:35 AMComment link
The whole "help you find music" industry is ridiculous. Avid listeners don't want this and casual listeners don't need it.
pwb on November 23, 2005 1:17 PMComment link
