Pandora has expanded from music to jokes with the addition of 10,000 comedy clips from more than 700 comedians to its Internet radio service.
Like its Music Genome Project, Pandora’s Comedy Genome Project analyzes the content of each clip for style, content and deliver in order to figure out which comedians have similar delivers or joke about similar topics. It’s this analysis and recommendation system that has turned Pandora into a Internet music powerhouse.
“Adding comedians to the mix has been one of the top requests from our listeners,” Pandora said in a blog post, “so we’ve taken the same approach to comedy as we have to music: carefully and deliberately analyzing comedic ‘bits’ across a very large number of attributes to capture the style, delivery and content of each performance.”
Some of the comedians that are now available on Pandora include Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy, George Carlin, Mitch Hedberg and Joan Rivers, according to The New York Times. And like its musical counterpart, comedy on Pandora will also come with audio advertisements. Unilever is Pandora’s first advertiser and will be promoting its Axe male body products and Klondike bars.
Once at the brink of destruction, Pandora has bounced back and is now preparing for an IPO that is expected to raise at least $100 million for the Internet radio company. Pandora has more than 80 million users and is essentially breakeven.