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No misery from this Pandora
July 16, 2008

Exciting things are happening at Pandora Radio. An extension of the Music Genome Project, this site is a great place to listen to your favorite artists and a gateway to discovering new music.

The idea behind the site is simple: highly customizable internet radio. Each song entered into Pandora’s massive music database is broken down by one of their fifty music analysts (not a computer program but real live humans). The analysts dissect the song based on key musical concepts such as song structure, genre influences, vocal intensity, instrumentation, and tonality.

It is extremely easy to use. Visitors to the website just type in a favorite artist or song and Pandora runs a quick analysis to determine similar artists and songs. The site then creates a radio station (which is saved) based around that artist or song. For instance, this morning I created a James Taylor station. The first song that played was James Taylor; the next was the Eagles, then Simon and Garfunkel, Van Morrison, and so on.  These are all artists and songs that I enjoy.  Their ability to select music relevant to my interests was extremely accurate.  It works like a personalized hits list.

While all the music mentioned is a few decades old, Pandora does not limit their selections by the age of the song.  Jack Johnson was one of the artists added to the play list on the James Taylor station. These two artists are certainly far removed in terms of musical eras. However, upon further listening, their music is very comparable. If you haven’t heard of Jack Johnson, then you are the perfect candidate for using Pandora. It exposes you to music you may have never experienced before and would probably not have found on your own. You might discover a new favorite band.

But what’s that you say? You don’t like Jack Johnson? Not a problem. You can give each song a virtual thumbs up or thumbs down. If you give it the thumbs up, Pandora saves that preference and searches for songs similar to that specific title. Thumbs down, and Pandora immediately moves on to the next track, saving your preference and updating the station so it won’t play that song (or similar ones) in the future. You can even add specific artists to a station that has been already created. It is customization on the most interactive of levels. One person’s James Taylor station could become something entirely different from another listener’s James Taylor station.

For the harder rock crowd, selecting Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” results in Rick Springfield, Van Halen, Michael Jackson, the Police, AC/DC…Yeah, isn’t Pandora great?

The site doesn’t just focus on huge, commercially successful artists, either.  Searching for a relatively unknown local Austin artist like Alex Dupree and the Trapdoor Band offers up one of their songs. By clicking on the band’s name and a new website page pops up to play another song sample, show Pandora’s description of the song, a list of similar songs, other Pandora members who are listening to the same artist, and the ability to leave a comment about the song.

A good rule of thumb is that if you can find it on iTunes, it’s probably on Pandora.  It’s free and with links to iTunes and Amazon, if you hear a song that you just have to own, you can buy it instantly with the click of a mouse.  You can download Pandora to your iPhone or other 3G smartphone.  YouTube should take note and add the ability to continuously stream videos based on music preferences.

Check out Pandora for a totally unique music experience.  While you’re making new discoveries and broadening your musical horizons, I’ll be enhancing my Pavarotti station…or listening to my The Outfield station…or creating my Michael Franks station…hhhmmmm, UB40 station is nice…of course I've got to have an Andrea Bocelli station to get through the rest of the day.

Posted by Stephen Nold on July 16, 2008 | Comments (0)