Pandora iPhone - Programming Blog

Pandora Seamlessly Integrates iPhone and Internet Radio

29 Nov 2009

free internet radio In this post, we’re going to take an in depth look at the Pandora iPhone and iPod Touch application in a continuing series of iPhone and iPod Touch applications right here on MakeUseOf.

Released originally in 2008, Pandora’s free iPhone app features all of the great features of the famous web application, as been seen on MakeUseOf before. If you’re not familiar with Pandora, the website lets you create your own custom radio station by naming a favorite artist or song, and then automatically adds variety to your stations and plays you songs from a vast library. However, with Pandora’s mobile app, this functionality integrates your iPhone and internet radio, anywhere you go!

iphone and internet radio

The application carries a similar user interface to Pandora’s online player, complete with album artwork, thumbs up and thumbs down voting buttons, a skip button, play/pause control and volume control (you can listen through a headset/earbuds or just through the device’s speaker). Just like browsing through songs, you can also look at your favorite “bookmarked” songs from your account on the app.

New stations can be created through the website and will show up on the application, and “Quickmix” stations can also be created directly from the device for playback at both locations. Settings such as the account you’re signed into, power management/battery preservation and higher quality audio are also available.

iphone and internet radio

The feature of viewing why a song was actually played also is on the app. So you can see something similar to “We’re playing this track because it features varying tempo and time signatures, repetitive melodic phrasing, etc” right on your device, which is a handy feature to find out why the system might have picked that song for your musical taste. Currently playing songs can also be bought off of the iTunes store on your device with the click of a button, and they can also be skipped up to six times per hour, per station if you don’t like the song selection.

iphone and internet radio

In a few personal tests with medium signal quality on AT&T’s 3G network near Los Angeles, I found the app to have great audio quality, although there were a few times when I would skip a song or the song would change and I would see a ten or fifteen second delay. In full signal though, this delay was not present, and there was a smooth transition between songs. Use of the app though on my home wifi network though showed great audio quality as well as no delays in between songs, although when I took my iPhone out for a day of 3G music streaming, battery life on my device took a big hit.

free internet radio

Pandora’s iPhone/iPod Touch app [iTunes link] is a must-have application for music lovers, and has a great array of features to accompany mobile device support with the one-click iTunes purchasing ability, ability to skip songs, and the synchronization of stations with the website player.

Do you use the Pandora iPhone/iPod Touch app or the website to listen to music? What other “must have” iPhone applications do you have? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Tags: album artwork, app, application, custom radio, device, free iphone, Los Angeles, Music, Pandora, Pandora iPhone, pause control, song, time signatures

Google Looks to Dominate iPhone and Android Advertising With AdMob Acquisition

In: web resources

9 Nov 2009

Google announced this morning that it has acquired 3-year old mobile display ad serving platform AdMob for $750 million, half the price it paid for YouTube in 2006. Why did Google make this move? Two reasons stand out.

First, AdMob is a very strong company in a sector (mobile advertising) that everyone expects to become much more important in the future. Second, this is a chance to make a big move towards monetizing on Apple’s iPhone platform while making sure that no one else does something similar to Android in the future.

Sponsor

AdMob puts display ads on mobile web pages and inside mobile applications. On Google’s page detailing the acquisition today the company used imagery to say that mobile search ads had been its primary focus to date, while AdMob’s focus was outside search and inside apps and pages. Google has an ad program for mobile apps to, though, called AdSense for Mobile Apps. You’ve probably seen it if you use the Pandora iPhone app.

AdMob is Strong in an Early Market

Apparently Google’s mobile apps ad platform hasn’t been doing so well, at least not compared to AdMob. AdMob has been growing fast. VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall did some back of the envelope math and estimated that the company was pulling in $40m+ in annual revenue 18 months ago, which was just 18 months after it launched.

That was in a radically different time for the mobile market. As our own Sarah Perez wrote two weeks ago in a post about AdMob’s latest mobile metrics report:

Believe it or not, it was only a year ago that the Motorola RAZR scored as the number one phone here in the U.S. while the iPhone was the only touchscreen device to even make the list of top ten handsets. Only a year later, and so much has changed.

That was durring the RAZR era that AdMob was at a pace that Matt Marshall said “looks headed to IPO-type revenues within three years.”

Planting a Flag on the iPhone, Protecting the Android Inventory

Now the iPhone rules. AdMob’s own numbers claimed that mobile traffic from the iPhone and iPod touch grew 19X over the last year. AdMob is making a strong play on the iPhone. TechCrunch reported this Spring that the company claims to be the biggest mobile app ad network on the iPhone and is working on a traffic exchange system for app promotion similar to what’s been done on Facebook.

Now move those efforts over into the Google column and Google is making money off of the free apps on Apple’s platform. That’s probably not something Apple feels great about.

Meanwhile, Google’s own Android mobile OS is no slouch, either. Admob reported this Fall that Android now accounts for the 2nd largest share of mobile web traffic (far) behind the iPhone, at 17% in the US, beating RIM and Windows Mobile.

Does Google want to see someone else leading the ad monetization on its own mobile OS just like it is now poised to do to Apple? No way. The answer? Buy AdMob.

It’s a very smart move. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google’s share price rose this morning to its highest point in almost 18 months.

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