Concept Driven Websites

www.pandora.com:
I think everyone knows about Pandora by now. Pandora asks the user to provide her favorite song or artist, and then Pandora follows the style of that music and compiles a playlist of new music for the user to explore. The design resembles a jukebox, with the album covers moving right to left as a song is played. The jukebox is navigatible to where the user can find out more about the song, why Pandora picked it, rate the song, or skip it altogether and go to the next selection. Pandora's concept is to make this seem like some act that is bettering the world through music. Accordingly, they don't want to make it obvious that they're selling the service. The user is prompted to sign up for an account only after she tries to skip multiple songs. Even then, the user is not forced to sign up, but only kindly told the she can't skip any more songs at this time unless he signs up. What I like least about the site itself is, of course, all the ads. But that's to be expected.

http://jacksonpollock.org:
The concept is: Just have fun. Waste time. Be creative. Accordingly, there's nothing on this site 'cept the paint and the cursor.

nytimes.com
I've talked to many older people who say they would never read a paper online because they need to have that feel of a paper version in their hands. The concept of the NYTimes website, I believe, is to replicate the organization of a physical newspaper. The home page has a layout similar to the front page of a newspaper, with story headlines surrounding a centerpeice picture. Users can flip through pages by clicking on topic tabs. The site does a good job of organizing a ton of information.