As reported in today's New York Times, the Pandora web radio service announced that it will add a comedy station. If you don't know, Pandora allows users to make customized music stations, starting by filling out lists of their favorite artists, or importing those lists already made on Facebook profiles, and then further customizing the stations as the listener gives thumbs up or thumbs down to tracks that come up.
From the initial data, and the continually added data about a listener's likes and dislikes, Pandora determines and adds in other music the user/listener might like. With the new service, Pandora intends to do the same with comedy. According to the Times story, Pandora picked 100 traits common to jokes to make a "genomic composite" to generate suggestions just as with music. However, I think it's questionable whether artifical intelligence like this can really understand comedy, because what people find funny is often such a matter of taste. Are Chris Rock and Bill Hicks really exactly the same comedically, as Pandora might say?
Other questions also arise with this development. Will it be a boon to the comedy business or not? The Times piece says that the most successful comedy album right now is Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk With Me (reviewed here), with just 3,400 in sales. That figure isn't that far off the amount of paid attendees for live shows by Demetri Martin, a comedian at a similar level of success -- Martin told Adam Carolla on a recent podcast that he gets between 800 to 1,200 audience members per show, which at a ticket price no doubt higher than an album, is probably a comparable income, if not better than what Birbiglia may see from such a successful album. Martin also is getting this for every show he does, while the album is a single product.
The point of all this comparison is that if Pandora's new service ends up boosting comedians' album sales, it could indeed bring huge benefits to comedy performers. Someone like Demetri Martin might end up attracting even more fans to those lucrative live shows, when promoted by Pandora's online airplay.
From the initial data, and the continually added data about a listener's likes and dislikes, Pandora determines and adds in other music the user/listener might like. With the new service, Pandora intends to do the same with comedy. According to the Times story, Pandora picked 100 traits common to jokes to make a "genomic composite" to generate suggestions just as with music. However, I think it's questionable whether artifical intelligence like this can really understand comedy, because what people find funny is often such a matter of taste. Are Chris Rock and Bill Hicks really exactly the same comedically, as Pandora might say?
Other questions also arise with this development. Will it be a boon to the comedy business or not? The Times piece says that the most successful comedy album right now is Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk With Me (reviewed here), with just 3,400 in sales. That figure isn't that far off the amount of paid attendees for live shows by Demetri Martin, a comedian at a similar level of success -- Martin told Adam Carolla on a recent podcast that he gets between 800 to 1,200 audience members per show, which at a ticket price no doubt higher than an album, is probably a comparable income, if not better than what Birbiglia may see from such a successful album. Martin also is getting this for every show he does, while the album is a single product.
The point of all this comparison is that if Pandora's new service ends up boosting comedians' album sales, it could indeed bring huge benefits to comedy performers. Someone like Demetri Martin might end up attracting even more fans to those lucrative live shows, when promoted by Pandora's online airplay.
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