Pandora: Made For The Broke College Student

Pandora: Made For the Broke College Student

By: Deven Del Castillo & Lauren Anderson

If you think about it, there is at least one person in the world, every second, that are listening to music. In 2010, iTunes hit 10 billion downloads; and 3 years later, you can just imagine how many downloads they have accumulated. If you combine that idea with the fact that college students ultimately want to save money, that's a lot of money to be spending on songs that you need to have. A simple solution to this dilemma of "to buy this $2 song or not" is to download it illegally, but even then, you are wasting precious napping time. The only logical solution is free music, all day, everyday. Even when you are taking a shower. This is called Pandora. By now, everyone knows of this glorious invention. A plethora of music packed into one website. Whether it be country, scremo, or opera (yes, they have opera) Pandora has it. The best part is; it's FREE! You heard that right you broke college kids; unlimited access to any song and it's completely free.

We evaluated the website Pandora based on four principles. The first one is appearance, does the appearance convey what the website is trying to get across with appropriate color schemes and fonts? Is the appearance too cluttered or too simple? Is it easy on the eyes? The second principle is the content. Does the website have all the necessary information to be successful? And if it does have the necessary information is that information easy to find and well organized? Is the information current and grammatically correct? The third principle is the functionality and usability of the website, does everything on the cite function correctly? Is it easy to understand? How quickly does the content load? Is it easy to navigate through the website to find what you want? The last principle is the appeal to an audience, is it appealing to one specific audience such as a certain age demographic? Or does it appeal to everyone? Is the appearance, content, and functionality/usability appropriate for the target audience?

So, it’s said that each color has it’s own specific “vibe”, you could say. That is, each color has a certain effect on people’s moods and emotions. Green is associated with nature and harmony, red with power, pink with love, orange increases appetite, etc. So what does color have to do with Pandora, you ask? Well, there is a method to their madness. It is said that blue is the universal favorite color, so that’s a bonus because Pandora is mainly blue. Also, the color blue has an effect that engulfs people with the feeling of serenity, clarity, intellect, and precision. Deeper shades of blue suggest a sense of elegance and formality, which is why it’s paired with fancy luxury cars. With all of this in mind, why would you NOT want to use Pandora? It’s basically saying that if you listen to Pandora with its blue home screen, you are guaranteed success and a calm state of mind. This blue color that Pandora chose to use would practically work wonders for those studious college students who are stressed out over homework. Pull up Pandora and the rich blue color sends a message of serenity and clarity throughout your mind, choose a calming music station, and now you’re suddenly in your own definition of heaven. Blue also suppresses the appetite, so now you don’t have to worry about having food be a distraction while doing that seven page research paper an hour before it’s due.

When first pulled up, Pandora has a clean, plain, and simple appearance. There is not a plethora of buttons that need to be pushed, or a strobe of neon lights blinding you. It’s simply the color blue with little white bubbles sporadically placed with thought. It draws in the audience’s eye and makes them want to stay on the site for hours on end. Although when you’re visiting a music site, staying on it for multiple hours is not that big of a challenge, you get what I mean. The simplicity is what draws and captures people’s attention.

The content of Pandora is extremely simple because the purpose of the website is to provide a free variety of music, not to drown your brain with pointless ads and other useless information. With each new song, Pandora takes it upon them to provide you with background information about the song. It typically includes the lyrics, for those of you who would like to sing along in the privacy of your own room, a small biography of the artist or group, and similar artists to help you expand your station to include all the music that you enjoy. All of the information and music is up to date, so no need to worry about getting made fun of if you spit out the wrong information about your “favorite” artist/group. If you’re into the most current, “hip” music, but can’t stand all of the advertisements that the top radio stations have, there is a playlist on Pandora called “Today’s Top Hits” and it plays everything from the newest Rihanna hit to JT’s latest album. Another great feature is that you can shuffle stations; it’s like picking your favorite stations and jumbling them together no matter the difference in genre. Instead of switching between radio stations you just pick the ones you want. For instance, you can be listening to country one minute, then switch it up and get some holiday music, and then really get crazy and play some Tupac. All this happens with one setting instead of switching between stations after every single song. All in all, the content of Pandora is very well organized and easy to navigate through. It seems to be error free and presented in a very professional manner along with current and updated information.

We initially grouped functionality and usability into one category because they are basically one, but in this portion of the evaluation we will really focus on the key details of both of them individually. Overall, Pandora functions very well and smoothly. All the links I tested took me where I needed to go and very efficiently at that. The lag time between songs wasn’t even noticeable and the information for the next song loaded quickly and properly. The only frustrations that I found with this site are the commercials and skip limits. With anything free there has to be a catch, sorry guys, and the commercials are definitely one of them. About every four to five songs there is a thirty second to two minute commercial, sometimes the commercials are directed towards a certain audience, I often got commercials about cheap college textbooks (clearly directed towards college students), cars, and at this time of the year especially Holiday shopping deals. It’s understandable that Pandora would have to put in ads because how else would they pay for the free music that you are listening to? The other catch is a skip limit, if you hear a song you don’t like your first reaction is to press the skip button or the thumbs down button and it will never play again, but you only have a certain amount of skips per station. Eventually the skips will reset, but there will come a time where a song that you absolutely loathe will come on and the only option will be to sit there in utter disgust and listen to the song. Usability mainly focuses on how easy it is to navigate and find what you are looking for throughout the site. With Pandora there isn’t a whole lot of navigating to be done, all you need is an email and a password to make an account and then you practically stay on the same page the entire time. When you want to add a new station, you simply type it into the search bar, select the desired song/genre/artist/band, and voilá it adds it your sidebar! This nifty little feature consolidates everything you need into one little page, rather than a plethora of pages for each song you want to listen to.

Overall, my partner, Lauren, and I believe that Pandora is very broke college student friendly, and pretty much any other type of person. My all-time favorite feature of Pandora is the fact that with whatever station your little heart chooses to play, Pandora takes it upon themselves to mix in new, old, and unknown songs. For example, I was listening to my “Atmosphere Radio” station and I realized that Pandora decided to play songs from Atmosphere’s latest album, songs that I had no clue even existed, and others that are very popular. It helps one to expand their thoughts about different kinds of music and even artists. I know because of this, I have recently become really into “old school” and “underground” hip-hop. On the downside, which both my partner and I, and probably every other consistent user of the Pandora station, agree that the advertisements and commercials can really become annoying and catch you off-guard. According to Lauren, her favorite part of Pandora is the thumbs up and thumbs down options for each song. “Every time you click an up or down thumb, Pandora knows you a little better. Either by knowing songs you like and playing more like them, or by knowing songs you don’t like and never playing them again.” Her least favorite part is that you can’t play a specific song, you can make a station of that song but it might take a while before that song actually plays.