I overheard the Pandora CEO justifying their market cap now that they are a publicly traded company and he said something that was very interesting to me.

Something to the effect that 60-80% of the time people do NOT want to choose what music they want to listen to, but have it chosen for them. Now, for the dominant internet radio website, it makes sense that they would say something like this. But is it true? And for however true it is, what does it mean for audiophiles?

Audiophiles who have nothing of audiophile quality that plays music for us [excluding friends and significant others].

Yeah, there are some nice tuners and some music servers out there - but hardly what one would call audiophile-quality.

Like, you know, why can’t a $100K turntable come with a mechanism - totally detached from but designed to work with the table - that randomly selects albums and plays them for us? Or a CD carousel player with a similar quality profile?

Anyway, I do think that it is a pain to pick out music to play all the time and I can understand why people accept a degradation in sonic performance in order to have someone else do it for them. Not sure any of this justifies Pandora’s stock price - but that is not going to bother me late at night.

[I know. Not many posts lately. The system sounded great and I stayed away from the paper and online rags But that only lasted so long… . There is a lot more to talk about… in future posts here.]

[We received this email yesterday… Thought it might be of interest. Curious how many audiophiles read audio porn on the Apple i-things, but …well… some might.]

We are a team of HiFi addicted journalists and have released a new,
interactive HiFi and consumer electronics magazine.

It will be published weekly and can be downloaded for free, using the
HiFi-Vision App.

The international consumer electronic magazine focuses on HiFi, TV, Home Cinema and High End. You can choose either the German or
English issue. As the App store offers both versions, HiFi Vision serves both the national German as well as the international CE market.

HiFi Vision provides you with reviews, product tests, news, workshops
and many more hifi-related topics.

The app supports smooth scrolling and comes with an amazing “Push
Notification” functionality that reminds you if a new issue is published.

Stay tuned and download your HiFi Vision Magazine now at
www.hifivision.net or directly at

http://itunes.apple.com/en/app/hifi-vision/id424509961

Daniel Muer / HiFi Vision Team

—————

Facebook: “HiFi Vision EN”
Twitter: “hifivision_en”
E-Mail: info(at)hifivision.net
Internet: www.hifivision.net

[It used to be free until late November or something… ]

By August 31, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. EST $0.00
September 1, 2011 at 12 midnight EST through December 30, 2011 at 5 p.m. EST $100.00
December 30, 2011 at 5:01 p.m. EST through January 13, 2012 $200.00

Registration