I was about to board a Virgin America flight from Boston to Los Angeles, and pop music streamed through speakers at the gate.<\/p>\n
As I passed by them, one airline employee said to another, “Who picked that music??”<\/em><\/p>\n The colleague replied, “Pandora did.”<\/em><\/p>\n So much for certain corporate radio executives who insist on saying, “Pandora never can compete with *<\/strong><\/span>local radio, because it doesn’t have the personality of a real local station.<\/em>”<\/p>\n Really?<\/p>\n Name the closest big commercial music station. Let’s call it KIIS-FM (not to single out that station, but to use a name for which there are numerous permutations).<\/p>\n When’s the last time someone asked “Who picked out that music?” and was told, “KIIS-FM did”?<\/p>\n Pandora is<\/strong> radio.<\/p>\n To its millions of fans, it is<\/strong> live.<\/p>\n And to those fans, it is<\/strong> local…if we define “local” as “relevant to the listener’s life.”<\/p>\n *<\/strong><\/span>Sometimes they’ll say “live radio,” sometimes “live local radio,” and probably what they mean is “simulated live radio in a simulated local setting.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was about to board a Virgin America flight from Boston to Los Angeles, and pop music streamed through speakers at the gate. As I passed by them, one airline employee said to another, “Who picked that music??” The colleague replied, “Pandora did.” So much for certain corporate radio executives who insist on saying, “Pandora […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"yoast_head":"\n