Invited talk at event organized by the HUMAINT project (the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission aiming to understand the impact of machine intelligence on human behaviour)

1. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
Pandora
The influence of “intelligent” technology on
the way we discover and experience music
Fabien Gouyon
Principal Scientist, Pandora
March 2018

2. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
Technological
innovation
Music
Business
User
eXperience
Music Listening
Experiences

3. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
Music industry is growing again
Transition Physical → Streaming:
Streaming now represents more than all
other revenue sources combined
This is just the beginning...
Music Listening
Experiences

4. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
Discovery Consumption
RADIO
Vinyls
Cassette
CDs
Digital downloads
On-demand
Terrestrial radio
Satellite radio
STREAMING
Internet radio
Music Listening
Experiences

5. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
From discover+own to access
“Access”?, “Experience”?... still TBD
→ The place of streaming competition &
innovation
Shaping people’s relation to music
Recommend what? Recommend how?
Product must balance repetition,
interactivity, novelty, popularity, diversity,
etc., at all times
Music Listening
Experiences

6. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
Time spent listening
Revenue
(US, Source: Edison Research,
2016)
(World, Source: IFPI,
2017)
Music Listening
Experiences

7. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
Requires some knowledge of:
- Listener
- Context
- Intent
Business model
ad-supported subscription
Intent
implicit explicit
...
Interactivity +
-
e.g. playlists
e.g. radio
Music Listening
Experiences

8. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
Pandora
Plus
- Un-limited personalized
radio stations
- Un-limited personalized radio
stations
- No ads
- Un-limited skips & replay
- Offline (un-limited)
- Full on-demand
- Customizable playlists
$9.99
$0
- Un-limited personalized radio
stations
- No ads
- Un-limited skips & replay
- Offline (limited)
Ad-supported Premium
$4.99
Pandora UX

9. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
Personalized Radio Stations
Constant music flow
→ What’s the best next track?
Why it works? Data:
- Music knowledge
- Radio programming expertise
- Scaling up with Data Science:
- 12+B stations created by 74+M MAUs
- 85+B thumbs
Pandora UX

10. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
Different data types/algorithms:
- Collaborative filtering
- Personalized filtering
- Editorial
- Curatorial
- Content-based
- Human labelling
- Machine listening
Watch out for
- Biases (popularity, similarity, etc.)
- Musical bubbles
Music Genome Project ®
All About Data

11. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
Editorial/
Curatorial
Content-
Based
Collaborative
filtering
Personalized
Filtering
Machine Learning
Station
User Data
e.g. 80+ algorithms @
All About Data
Optimization

12. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
Editorial/
Curatorial
Content-
Based
Collaborative
filtering
Personalized
Filtering
Machine Learning
Station
User Data
Learn balance between
Exploit vs. Explore
e.g. 80+ algorithms @
All About Data

13. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
All About Data
(CF-based recommendations,
Last.fm data, [Celma, 2010])
• Limited reach of some reco. algorithms:
• Typical caveat of collaborative
filtering-based algorithms
• Coldplay, Drake, etc. vs.
“Working-class” musicians (long-tail)
• Relevance for streaming services:
• Radio typically plays 10’s artists per
week
• Streaming has the potential to play
100k’s artists per week

14. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
(Not just music consumption) Most of music industry is
being disrupted by technological innovation, e.g.:
- Creation
- Rights monitoring → return for creators
- Marketing & monetization
Trends. “More is better”:
- User: Hyper-personalization and contextualization
- Content: More audio content (Ads, News, Podcasts,..)
- Interaction: Voice-based
Beyond

15. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
- How to ethically shape attention?
- Towards “well-spent” engagement. Difficult because:
- "All-you-can-consume” nature of modern media
- Extremely fast-paced scientific and technological
developments
- Very competitive and dynamic music streaming industry
- Empower users in technological evolution
- Software dev./Design methodology?
- Complement race towards latest technological trend,
business metrics, etc.
Beyond
Some challenges

16. Technology and Music Listening Experience
fgouyon
Pandora
Music Listening
Experiences
Beyond
All About Data
Pandora UX