1.04.2006

Pandora and internet radio

I used to daydream sometimes of having a massive underground bunker that had every single recording ever on a massive changer that would be able to scan my brain and know exactly what kind of music I wanted to hear at any given moment and play an appropriate song based of either style or lyrics. Later I modded my dream boombox to be more personal soundtracky and adjust for irony and juxtaposition.

Sadly my dream machine is not yet reality. But oddly enough, tech for music listeners is moving in the general direction.

Internet radio has been the better way to listen to music for quite some time now. As standard FM stations are increasingly hampered by the effort of Clear Channel to force them to crush the human soul, more and more people are saying "fuck the Radio" and going pure Ipod or satellite radio. Both offer the better part of the musical experience, by provide a wide variety of channels garnered to more specific tastes, say 80 electronic or 60 dance hall or some other non mainstream genre.

XM gives 100 + channels for a small subscription fee plus the initial cost of the equipment, but is also good anywhere in the USA. Sirius is the less large of the satellite radio providers.

Internet radio is by no means perfect, but by allowing a ton of would be DJs to put together several hours of their own mix and post it on the radio a very organic mix can be achieved that, in my own opinion, creates a much more visceral experience in listening that becomes more about the music itself and not foisting top 40 merchandise and endless commercials on us.
Do a google search and you'll find tons of internet broadcasters out there. Some of the bigger ones are Rhapsody and Yahoo My own preferences are for Live365's blend. Tends to be a little more eclectic.

But the most interesting one to date is the new style by the The Music Genome Project.

A friend of mine told me about an online radio service that would basically allow me to plug a musician or band as a reference point to what kind of music I would enjoy listening to and create my own personalized radio station. The Theory behind this rather odd Idea called Pandora is that musical tastes have certain recognizable patterns that when cross referenced will allow someone to be led to new music that they otherwise might never have come across. The radio stream service is called Pandora

On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

Over the past 5 years, we've carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

It has been quite an adventure, you could say a little crazy - but now that we've created this extraordinary collection of music analysis, we think we can help be your guide as you explore your favorite parts of the music universe.

We hope you enjoy the journey.


Fair enough.

As each song plays you are allowed the option to "vote" on the song. A thumbs up for this is kind of shit I want to hear more of" or a thumbs down for "This is the worst music ever. Never play this song again." Even cooler is the "why am I hearing this song" button which gives you a brief description as to why Pandora's box thinks you might like it. All in all pretty cool.

So the real question is "how good is Pandora at getting what I like?" the answer is not too shabby. When you first start it up, whatever band you plug in will be the template for what other bands are selected. While this is fine, you'll find that like anything it will get a little boring. Thankfully you can keep adding more bands which increases the scope of what it will play for you. When I plugged in only two bands I noticed that mix what slightly repetitive. So variation in you themes helps quite a bit in keeping it fresh.

As an experiment I also plugged in a band that in my opinion defies easy definitions. The Doves. Because the Doves are so all across the board as far as styles go, I thought it would be a good test. Frankly Pandora did fail here. What came back simply sounded nothing like them. When I queued Pandora to tell me why it was playing certain bands and musicians which were so not like the doves as to be laughable, the answers came back that Pandora had selected Mars Volta for my listening enjoyment for "electric rock instrumentation, mild rhythmic syncopation, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, a vocal centric aesthetic and major key tonality."

Ok. But I don't think there is anyone on the planet that would agree that the logical jump from the Doves to Mars Volta makes sense. SO it's not a perfect system. But hey, what a mix!

try it yourself and see what you think. I'd love to hear what you think and whether it turned you on to anything new that you now love.

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