Chad Clark's Open Journal : 2006-05-24

1)

www.pandora.com is a really interesting site.  I think it is a good 
idea but the site still needs work.  The following is a reply I made to
a mailing list today.

> > There was a site that played songs and then you said "like it" "dont'
> > ever show me more like this" "meh" or some such. After that it would
> > offer you another song.
> 
> www.pandora.com

It sounds like a neat idea but I tried a few band names and it didn't list
anything.  (headstones, watchmen, rhymes with orange)

The interface is confusing.  It shows part of a tab or button or something
on what looks like another window above an window resize bar but I can't
resize.  Later the resize bar moves out of the way on it's own.

"Therion" found some music but again the interface was confusing.  It
started playing a Therion song.  Eventually I got it to play another band.
It should let me see a list of "similar" bands but instead it forces me to
page through one at a time.  The music playing matches the the one song
listed.

It is possible to go "back" through the related bands but I can't get it to
go "back" and play a song it already played.

I think after six songs I got the message "our music license force us to
limit the number of songs you may skip each hour".  I discovered (by
accident) that pressing the browser "refresh" will load a new song.

Eventually I figured out that a "create new station" is the button to click
to search with a new band name.

Searching for "pearl jam" led to the message "I had a small problem while
looking for that music.  It's my fault." and a "try again" button.  WTF? If
trying again will help then re-try automatically.  (Trying again did not
help.)  The same happened for "sven gali".

The band "scatterbrain" was not found.  Ditto for the "odds".

Whenever a band was not found I did not get brought back to the search
prompt.  Instead it brought me back to the the "Therion" selection from
before.

"54-40" was found but I didn't like the related music.  Every second related
song was by 54-40.  I wanted to find related bands.

I tried "nirvana" and got four Nirvana songs in a row before giving up. I
want to see similar bands, not more music by the same band.

"blind melon" was found.  Again every second song was by the band.  The
interface locked up after three songs.

At one point I saw the message "We're having unexpected technical
difficulties.  Our engineers are scrambling to fix things.  Please try again
later." so I reloaded the page.

The flash seemed a bit clunky.  The only other time I saw a Flash based site
developed using Laszlo it was also clunky (ie slow to respond).

In short:
- A very neat idea to link music by aspects and report on similar music.
- How to use the interface is not clear and takes some experimenting to
  figure out.
- The search results presentation is too limiting.  I want to be able
  to scan a list of results.  I want to be able to hear songs that I
  previously heard.
- The interface is too single-task oriented.  It should let me search for
  related bands and listen to a different song while I am searching.
- It still seems to be very Beta but I think there is potential.