Background
The internet has been a boon for some and a curse of others. This is especially true as it pertains to the music industry. Before the advent of online music streaming, CDs were the vessel through which consumers were able to purchase music from their favorite artists. The downside was, if a customer only liked one song by an artist they would have to purchase the whole CD and spend $15-20 to get the one song they liked. With the advent of Napster that all changed. Napster was among one of the first online music streaming companies that allowed consumers to download songs one at a time and for free. Thus allowing consumers to obtain the individual songs they liked, instead of paying for an entire CD of songs they did not.
Napster was shut down in early 2000 due to copyright infringement. According to an article published in the journal Media, Culture, and Society (2003), The Recording Industry Association of America, claimed that Napster provided, “Users with peer-to-peer software and provided a brokering service that managed a real-time index of available music files. This combination of marketed products and services, effectively turned Napster into a music piracy service” (pg. 7). This
…show more content…
Westergreen’s idea was pure genius. According to Wallace (2013), he hired a team of various music industry professionals such as, musicians and musicologists and had them “analyze over 10,000 songs a month looking for different attributes such as: harmony, rhythm, vocals, genre, instrumentation” (pg. 207). By analyzing these various musical components Westergreen’s dream team offered up a database that yields a recommendation engine which will suggest songs with other similar qualities, allowing a customer to choose their own personal styling for their radio stations. Both of these components together, give Pandora the competitive edge over others in the