HIGH FIDELITY

There’s a new post in TechCrunch today talking about Pandora’s redesign.

This redesign is long overdue — since 2006, the company has made almost zero improvements to the design or behavior of its basic Web product. Instead, they’ve focused on a) improving their song matching intelligence (an investment in technology IP) and b) building and launching their mobile app, which has driven massive user growth. They didn’t invest in improving their user experience because they didn’t have to — they were gaining users anyway.

Now, with a bunch of things happening at once in this space — the incompatibility of Flash with many Apple devices (and its decline as a technology), the rise of compelling social music services like Mog & Rdio, the launch of Spotify in the US, the threat of iheartradio, more VC funding for digital music startups, their IPO — Pandora realizes it’s no longer the upstart but the incumbent.

Interesting how the new design looks like the offspring of Spotify, iTunes and Rhapsody Beta.