Level 3 Powers Pandora
Wednesday November 1, 7:00 am ET
Music Discovery Service Looks to Level 3 for High Speed Network Services to Accommodate Rapid Growth
BROOMFIELD, Colo., Nov. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Level 3 Communications' Content Markets Group today announced that it has been selected by Pandora to support the company's rapidly growing Internet streaming radio service. Under the terms of the agreement, Level 3 will provide Pandora, a music discovery service, with network solutions including high speed Internet access via 10 gigabits per second (10GigE) ports that will enable Pandora's continued strong growth.
"We have been experiencing a significant increase in the amount of new listeners to our service -- as well as an increase in overall listening hours," said Tom Conrad, chief technology officer for Pandora. "Using Level 3 to scale our network, we are confident that any future growth can be accommodated. Level 3 will help us to ensure that our listeners will enjoy fast, uninterrupted service."
Pandora is an online radio service designed to help users discover and listen to music that is tailored to their tastes. Created by the Music Genome Project, an ongoing effort to analyze hundreds of thousands of songs across a series of distinct musical attributes, Pandora asks the listener to enter the names of favorite songs or artists into Pandora. The service then quickly scans the comprehensive collection and launches a personalized streaming station for the user, containing songs with interesting musical similarities. Listeners further hone their stations by offering feedback on the selections.
"Pandora is one of the most exciting new applications on the Internet today, and we are excited to be a part of their growth trajectory," said Brady Rafuse, president of Level 3 Content Markets. "The Level 3 network was built for this type of bandwidth-intensive application and is ideally suited to scale rapidly to meet Pandora's ever increasing bandwidth requirements."
Eight of the top-10 Internet destinations trust Level 3 to deliver network solutions. With one of the world's largest IP backbones, Level 3 provides reliable high capacity solutions to meet the rapidly growing demand for rich media content online. With Internet connectivity in 82 key markets, and a comprehensive suite of network services that serve as customizable building blocks, Level 3 has the scalability, performance, and service portfolio to help its customers meet their customers' demands.
About Level 3 Communications
Level 3 Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: LVLT - News), an international communications company, operates one of the largest Internet backbones in the world. Through its customers, Level 3 is the primary provider of Internet connectivity for millions of broadband subscribers. The company provides a comprehensive suite of services over its broadband fiber optic network including Internet Protocol (IP) services, broadband transport and infrastructure services, colocation services, voice services and voice over IP services. These services provide building blocks that enable Level 3's customers to meet their growing demands for advanced communications solutions. The company's Web address is www.Level3.com.
About Pandora
Launched in Fall 2005, Pandora's online radio service (www.pandora.com) is based on the Music Genome Project, which began in 2000 and is the most thorough analysis of popular music ever undertaken. Each song in this massive collection, which covers Pop, Rock, Jazz, Electronica, Hip Hop, Country, Blues, R&B, and Latin, is analyzed by a trained musician along 400 distinct musical attributes (such as melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.) to capture its unique musical identity. Music lovers need only enter the name of their favorite song or artist and Pandora does the rest -- creating a tailored stream of songs that share key musical characteristics -- launching a personalized listening experience, full of new discovery across the genome. Listeners can create up to 100 of these online radio stations, refine them by providing feedback and even email them to friends. |
