Pandora

Nathan discovered this great new music service called Pandora. It developed out of the Music Genome Project, which aims to analyze music based on its musical qualities. They recommend music based on things like syncopation, use of vocal harmony, and blues influences - even things like 'prominently features an accordion'. To use Pandora, you choose an artist or song, and Pandora creates a station for you, based on artists with similar musical DNA as your artist. The station plays a mix that includes the original artists and these others ones it finds for you.

The musical analysis really does seem to be pretty good most of the time - occasionally there are songs that I do not like. But in that case you can say "I don't like this song - it's not what this station should play", or just give it a thumbs down.

This morning I created a station this morning based on a blog entry I read about Portastatic. Pandora played something by them first, then offered up songs by Guided By Voices, Clem Snide, and Ben Folds to play for me. I can click on a link that says "Why is this song playing?". Here is what it said for the Guided By Voices song:

Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features mellow rock instrumentation, mild rhythmic syncopation, a subtle use of vocal harmony, major key tonality and mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation.

I have stations for artists ranging from Robert Johnson (blues) to The Decemberists (indie) to The Blue Scholars (rap/hip-hop). It's a great way of learning new music, and learning what I like musically. I know very little about acutal music, other than that I like or dislike something. Now I am learning to recognize hihats, syncopation, and that vamping has more than one meaning. Right now I am getting to use Pandora free - soon I will have to subscribe, but this is one of those rare products that I am willing to shell out money for immediately. This is a fantabulous product. The cost is 36/yr or 12/quarter.

As far as choice of music, they seem to have a large range. The main genres that they do not have are Classical and Latin. They will add Latin later this year, but classical may be a ways off - as they say: " We're still trying to figure out how to tackle that animal".

Lastly, the streaming is good, even at home with our not so amazing DSL, and the little Flash application is easy to use. All in all, many thumbs up for Pandora.