WIRED
The leading online radio service and world’s biggest social network have forged a bond that will solidify both companies’ dominance, while offering music fans a way to share music with each other that appears to lack any significant downside. Pandora pays copyright holders, and integrating your Pandora and Facebook accounts won’t pollute your Facebook stream with endless notifications about what you’re listening to.
The upside for Pandora users is significant, due to the ways in which it broadcasts their taste, helps them discover and enjoy new music through their friends. There are countless ways to do these exact same things elsewhere on the web, and you’ve already been able to share Pandora stations with friends. But Pandora + Facebook = such easy math that even the busy or excessively lazy can integrate it into their lives.
This joint announcement is twofold. One part involves “Like” buttons that Facebook and others will embed on its own site and partner sites around the web using the Open Graph API Facebook announced yesterday. Whenever you click one of these buttons, that information gets added to your Facebook Graph, which Pandora can then tap in order to present you with stations based on what you’ve liked on Facebook and around the web.
It’s too early to call at this point, because the buttons haven’t shown up yet, but if this aspect of Facebook’s initiative takes off it will make the company the de facto storage point for our musical preferences, while boosting Pandora’s utility. Best of all, Pandora won’t blast all your Facebook friends with messages about what you’re listening to, should you integrate your accounts. (If you want Facebook to notify people about what you’re listening to on Pandora, you can still click the share button on the currently playing song, and choose the Facebook option.)
With that out of the way, let’s move on to the aspect of this announcement that you can start using right now. Here’s how to get your Pandora account to make friends with your Facebook account — you only have to do it once, and there doesn’t appear to be a downside unless you don’t want people knowing that you spend most of your Pandora time listening to Menudo. Integrating your accounts widens your listening options within Pandora considerably, and immediately.
To activate Pandora’s optional Facebook integration, go to Pandora then click the Friends’ Music link at the lower right.
If you’ve already used Pandora’s own social networking features to add friends, they will show up here. Click Add Friends to proceed to the part where you integrate Pandora with Facebook.
Then, click the Connect With Facebook button. Nothing appeared to happen, but when we reloaded Pandora, our Facebook friends appeared alongside their Facebook profile pictures, their most recently played station, and the songs they’ve liked most recently. I can now make my own stations from any of that music:
That’s it — you’re connected. We should note that all of these features can exist without using Facebook at all, because you can enter another Pandora user’s e-mail to friend them, although Facebook makes it far, far easier. With your accounts integrated, you can make stations from any song a friend has liked and can copy their artist stations over to your own profile, where they will be shaped by your own musical preferences (for instance, songs in friends’ stations that you’ve banned won’t play).
Making the Pandora listening experience even more social, whenever you encounter a song that one of your friends likes, a tag will appear to let you know. One side effect of this new feature will likely be to encourage Pandora users to add more tracks to their favorites, because now, other people have such an easy way to see them. And the more they sculpt their stations and preferences, the more reason they have to stick with Pandora for their online (and, increasingly, device-based) radio listening. And now that Pandora includes video ads (we saw our first one today), it’s even more prepared to monetize repeat visitors.
Pandora tried this strategy earlier with its own social network, but who wants to create a whole set of friends manually on Pandora? Facebook is the social networking king of the hill right now, so it makes more sense for Pandora to grab peoples’ friends from there.
Ultimately, Facebook’s bold attempt to become the central repository for peoples’ musical taste, among other socially identifying elements, could help the company avoid the fates of its ancestors, Friendster and MySpace.
Judging from the smoothness and power of this Pandora part of the equation, it just might work.
The upside for Pandora users is significant, due to the ways in which it broadcasts their taste, helps them discover and enjoy new music through their friends. There are countless ways to do these exact same things elsewhere on the web, and you’ve already been able to share Pandora stations with friends. But Pandora + Facebook = such easy math that even the busy or excessively lazy can integrate it into their lives.
This joint announcement is twofold. One part involves “Like” buttons that Facebook and others will embed on its own site and partner sites around the web using the Open Graph API Facebook announced yesterday. Whenever you click one of these buttons, that information gets added to your Facebook Graph, which Pandora can then tap in order to present you with stations based on what you’ve liked on Facebook and around the web.
It’s too early to call at this point, because the buttons haven’t shown up yet, but if this aspect of Facebook’s initiative takes off it will make the company the de facto storage point for our musical preferences, while boosting Pandora’s utility. Best of all, Pandora won’t blast all your Facebook friends with messages about what you’re listening to, should you integrate your accounts. (If you want Facebook to notify people about what you’re listening to on Pandora, you can still click the share button on the currently playing song, and choose the Facebook option.)
With that out of the way, let’s move on to the aspect of this announcement that you can start using right now. Here’s how to get your Pandora account to make friends with your Facebook account — you only have to do it once, and there doesn’t appear to be a downside unless you don’t want people knowing that you spend most of your Pandora time listening to Menudo. Integrating your accounts widens your listening options within Pandora considerably, and immediately.
To activate Pandora’s optional Facebook integration, go to Pandora then click the Friends’ Music link at the lower right.
If you’ve already used Pandora’s own social networking features to add friends, they will show up here. Click Add Friends to proceed to the part where you integrate Pandora with Facebook.
Then, click the Connect With Facebook button. Nothing appeared to happen, but when we reloaded Pandora, our Facebook friends appeared alongside their Facebook profile pictures, their most recently played station, and the songs they’ve liked most recently. I can now make my own stations from any of that music:
That’s it — you’re connected. We should note that all of these features can exist without using Facebook at all, because you can enter another Pandora user’s e-mail to friend them, although Facebook makes it far, far easier. With your accounts integrated, you can make stations from any song a friend has liked and can copy their artist stations over to your own profile, where they will be shaped by your own musical preferences (for instance, songs in friends’ stations that you’ve banned won’t play).
Making the Pandora listening experience even more social, whenever you encounter a song that one of your friends likes, a tag will appear to let you know. One side effect of this new feature will likely be to encourage Pandora users to add more tracks to their favorites, because now, other people have such an easy way to see them. And the more they sculpt their stations and preferences, the more reason they have to stick with Pandora for their online (and, increasingly, device-based) radio listening. And now that Pandora includes video ads (we saw our first one today), it’s even more prepared to monetize repeat visitors.
Pandora tried this strategy earlier with its own social network, but who wants to create a whole set of friends manually on Pandora? Facebook is the social networking king of the hill right now, so it makes more sense for Pandora to grab peoples’ friends from there.
Ultimately, Facebook’s bold attempt to become the central repository for peoples’ musical taste, among other socially identifying elements, could help the company avoid the fates of its ancestors, Friendster and MySpace.
Judging from the smoothness and power of this Pandora part of the equation, it just might work.
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