Pandora (2016)Copied

Pandora launched in 2000 and, as The Verge put it, its look had barely changed since, with just two variations of a rather staid wordmark. By October 2016 it was the grizzled veteran of music streaming, facing Spotify and preparing a full on-demand service of its own, and it needed to look like it belonged in the same conversation.

The new identity was designed by Pandora's in-house team, led by executive creative director Julie Scelzo and vice president of creative services Tony Calzaretta. The logo is a simple outlined P in bright blue, which Pandora said serves as a portal into the music you love. Around it the brand uses a vibrant, bold colour scheme with bright colours and clashing patterns, meant to make the brand look the way music sounds, as Fast Company's headline put it.

It appeared first in the redesigned mobile app, with the website and other devices to follow later in the year, when Pandora was expected to announce its streaming service.

Design Week placed it directly after Spotify's colour explosion by Collins, and its readers split: one praised a liberating, textured take on music, another sighed that it was a depressing start to the week, and a third noted that MTV had done the same thing 30 years earlier.

The Verge read the logo as a business plan. Since 2000 Pandora had barely changed its staid wordmark, and the new look arrived with a target of 11 million paid subscribers by 2020, a 182 per cent increase, and an on demand service built from the Rdio assets to take on Spotify and Apple Music. The gap was stark: about 78 million monthly listeners but only 3.9 million paying, against Spotify's 40 million. A bolder colour scheme was the visible part of a company trying to stop being radio and start being a subscription.

The comparison with Spotify is unavoidable and not flattering. The outlined P is clean and works well as an icon, but the noisy colour and pattern system feels like a response to a competitor rather than an idea of Pandora's own. For a brand whose real asset was personalised radio, the identity says music in general, not Pandora in particular.