Pop Psychology: _Never mind iTunes, open Pandora’s box_
By Alex Goodman
Nov. 22, 2010 1:39 a.m.
Last week, Apple toyed with my emotions.
On Monday, four clocks appeared on its home page, displaying the time in California, New York, London and Tokyo. Above them, a gray line of text foreshadowed an exciting announcement about iTunes.
Above that in black, bold letters: “Tomorrow is just another day. That you’ll never forget.”
I expected, as I’m sure everyone did, that I would wake up Tuesday morning, turn on my computer and find a new version of iTunes I could download directly into my brain.
Forget MySpace, Spotify and Rhapsody ““ there’s no need to store music online when we can keep it in our frontal lobes.
Instead I woke up to find that The Beatles collection was now available for download. I opened iTunes, I turned on “Misery” and I cried, baby, cried. For the first time in recorded history, The Beatles were a disappointment.
Anyone who read my column last week knows I’m a devoted fan of the Liverpudlian foursome, and I certainly celebrate the fact that people around the world can now download, legally and at high quality, the greatest music in pop history with the click of a button.
This is more a problem, then, for my therapist ““ I’m afraid that Apple doesn’t really understand me. Such an outlandish marketing campaign suggests she doesn’t know what gets me excited these days. She’s coming on strong, certainly, but I keep drifting back to an accommodating, reliable friend, who always seems to know what I’m thinking.
Her name is Pandora.
She knows I have a soft spot ““ or, I guess, a hard, heavily distorted spot ““ for post-grunge rock. This algorithmically ruled online radio-maker knows that when I start a station based on the 30 Seconds to Mars song “From Yesterday,” I want a bunch of Three Days Grace and Breaking Benjamin, and I want Nirvana to pop up whenever someone looks at my computer to judge my taste in music.
In other words, she accepts me for who I am, but she also challenges me to be the best version of myself I can be. She throws in a slower tune by Bush or Pearl Jam every once in a while, or jolts me awake with a head-banger by Disturbed because she understands my mood swings.
And every once in a while she introduces me to something new ““ the Finnish band Apocalyptica, for instance, which plays hard rock with cellos. While Apple repeatedly puffs out its chest and struts its stuff, Pandora has earned my trust with its quiet consistency.
Of course, Apple is the rich and flashy life of the party in this analogy, with hundreds of millions of users and 26.7 percent of the U.S. music market in 2009. Pandora, by comparison, is the girl next door: 50 million registered users as of June, but an estimated $2 million in the red last year.
We already tend to attribute emotions to our gadgets, as anyone who’s ever pleaded with his computer or named his or her car knows.
But Pandora certainly makes it easier, the way its algorithms operate in such mysteriously accurate ways and adapt so quickly to our usage habits.
So maybe that’s the answer, as the music industry struggles to find a successful business model for the digital age.
Maybe these services, in addition to providing quality content, must learn to exploit our very fragile human emotions. Maybe, as we move our lives from the real world to the Internet, our technology needs to become our friend.
We are, after all, the people of the Tamagotchi, the Furby and the pet rock. We’ve been searching, probably since the dawn of hurt feelings, for a way to find companions who like us because we pretend they do.
So sure, I’ll go running back to Apple ““ we have a long-standing, mature relationship, and I know not to fault her for one instance of advertising hyperbole. I need the elegance and dependability of iTunes, and I really do love my iPod.
But Pandora will always have a special place in my heart, too. She always seems to know just what I want to hear.
If you’re having relationship problems with that special software in your life, e-mail Goodman at [email protected].
“Pop Psychology” runs every Monday.
Goodman’s blog, “The Good Pick,” runs every Monday at dailybruin.com/ae
