Comments on: Stickier music sites

By: Unique visitors or total attention? « Sampled + Sorted

Unique visitors or total attention? « Sampled + Sorted — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 22:38:31 +0000

[...] visitors or total attention? 26Apr08 I wrote on Wed about the notion of “total attention” as a useful metric by which to evaluate music or [...]

By: davidporter

davidporter — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:30:42 +0000

Yes, agree, esp when compared with iLike or imeem, both of which offer a more lean-forward experience. However, I’d have thought Pandora would reflect similar site times given it is also “pure” internet radio, by and large.

I was less surprised about Last b/c so many of its users just come to the site to check their personal charts (I recall Martin mentioning ages ago that only a small minority of users actually used its internet radio service, although this may have changed more recently).

The point about listeners paying attention (or not) while listening is an important one. Many/most internet radio listeners likely tune in while doing a spreadsheet, the laundry, whatever. And this will only increase as a bigger proportion of listening happens in the living room, on the iPhone, etc.

At some point, audio ads will be necessary – and I think viable, if done right – for internet radio services. And by “done right” I believe they have to be 4 things (prob a good subject to elaborate on in another post sometime):

1. short (no longer than 10-15 sec)
2. infrequent (no more than 4-6/hour)
3. relevant
4. creative (amusing, ironic, perhaps user-generated, etc)

Targetspot is one company that’s seeking to do this right (full disclosure: I consulted for TS last year and early this).

By: Penny Distribution

Penny Distribution — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:34:17 +0000

Very interesting – I like the premise of the study but surely Live365 is “stickier” by your metric because of the nature of the service. It’s a radio service and many users will use it as such – launching the station and leaving it on “in the background” – but not necessarily “paying attention” to the site itself and therefore much less likely to be affected by any advertising or “attention-based revenue generators” Live365 may be running. They’re only paying attention to the music most of the time.