Pandora Radio Now Offering Comedy Content

Pandora, the on line service that offers its users thousands of hours of free streaming music has just announced they are adding 10,000 clips form over 700 comedians to its roster of content.

In the relative short time of its existence, Pandora has already revolutionized the way people listen to music on-line. Virtually commercial free with the only major limitation being the number of times a user can skip a track, the site has become the standard by which all other streaming sites are measured against. With the site now offering indexed comedy bits in the same interface as the music, they have managed to expand their appeal even further.

The comedic sensibilities of the material added to Pandora range from the 1920s and 30s all the way through to the current era. One could hear a routine by Abbot and Costello or something from George Carlin if that was the listener's particular fancy. The really interesting element of this development is that the minds behind Pandora's ability to "predict" what a listener will like in grouping similar songs and artists have applied the same logic to comedy.

Comedy is an art form that is perhaps even more subjective than music. What one person finds hilarious may not be even remotely funny to someone else. This subjectivity also bleeds from comic to comic. It will be interesting to see whether Pandora can actually wade through the fantastically diverse senses of humor of its listeners to really tailor content to their liking.

People that book comedy clubs have a hard enough time grouping together a bill that will hit every possible note in the comedy songbook. While it's not impossible to make some assumptions about sense of humor (someone who loves Will Rogers will probably not enjoy Chris Rock, for instance), it still remains the one piece of this puzzle that seems the most ambitious and open to failure. Can a computer really determine what someone things is funny?

That hurdle aside, the comedy content being added to Pandora can only be seen as one more stab directly into the heart of terrestrial or traditional radio. Now that it offers music and comedy bits, what Pandora is only lacking now is celebrity presence, such as in the form of a famous talk radio host. If and when the site starts running talk shows, its status as the premier radio network may be permanently solidified.