Hands on with Pandors, an online "radio station" created by The Music Genome Project that personalizes music for you based on the type of music "genes" that you like the most.Pandora's box held all the miseries of the world. Which may make Pandora a wildly inappropriate name for a phenomenally good music service, because I've heard nothing but good from my speakers since I signed up.
Pandora is an online music service that lets you build your own stations based on similarities among songs and artists. You start with the name of a song or a favorite artist, and it streams music by that artist and others that are similar. It determines similarities by consulting the Music Genome Project, a database that contains hundreds of descriptors or "genes" that make up a song—melody, harmony, rhythm, kind of accompaniment, lyrics, subject matter, modality, and more, instead of the vast imprecision of genre.
I created a station by entering "Karrin Allyson," a jazz singer with brilliant phrasing and an endearing little rasp in her voice. Pandora played one of her songs and followed it with a Jane Monheit song. I added Frank Sinatra, and the next song was one of his, followed by a Harry Connick, Jr. tune. Other artists, such as Tony Bennett and Billie Holiday, were pleasant and predictable, and then Pandora knocked me out with a rendition of "I'll Be Around" by the exquisite but lesser-known Tierney Sutton.
One of the songs had an instrumental bridge with some brass, a couple of trumpets and a trombone, but low-key and mild. The next song Pandora played was a Dixieland instrumental. The service had taken a minor attribute in one song and elevated it to a major attribute as a trial balloon. I pulled up a menu and voted "Don't play songs like this." I didn't want it to harsh my mellow. I could also have chosen to build a new station around that song, though, for a different mood.
Testing Pandora's instrumental prowess, I made a station based on Russell Malone and Bucky Pizzarelli, two eminent jazz guitarists. Pandora played some of their stuff and then came up with "Tears" from Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler's joint album, Neck and Neck. Next it floored me with Kaki King's "Exhibition," a gorgeous, sonorous exploration for solo guitar, and I clicked on "Why did you play this song?" Pandora told me, "...because it features acoustic sonority, major key tonality, a good dose of acoustic guitar pickin', acoustic rhythm guitars and an instrumental arrangement." I couldn't agree more.—Continue reading...
Pandora's descriptions come from a team of 35 analysts, who have listened to and analyzed all the 400,000 or so songs that so far are in the Music Genome database. Prospective analysts take a test to get the job, and only 20 percent pass. They then receive rigorous training, and their analysis is continually monitored and cross-checked by other analysts. What might seem like the ultimate work-at-home job is actually done with everyone in one room to keep synergy high and to make collaboration easy.
The Pandora player is a Flash window that shows album covers and a history of songs each station has played. It's licensed to play streams, which means that you can't choose specific songs, can't replay songs, and can skip only ten songs per hour per station, to respect the streaming license. You can build up to 100 stations; after that, you have to delete some to make room for new ones. You can buy individual songs from iTunes or whole CDs from Amazon, store links to favorite songs, send stations you've built to friends, and link to them on blogs. The player is free, but it shows ads unless you buy a subscription.
The founder of Pandora and the Music Genome Project, Tim Westergren, says, "Our role is to help musicians find their audiences. In addition to analyzing all of the major artists, we solicit submissions from independents. We want to expose people to new artists."
Unless you use very stringent station criteria, you'll hear new music, and it'll be good—based on styles and sounds you already like.
"Genre is useless in this context," says Westergren. "Terminology changes all the time, but the music's genetic attributes are constants, accurate descriptors that link songs to one another in pleasing and surprising ways."
Pandora is all that—pleasing, surprising, and downright addictive, since, ultimately, every station is all about you.
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