Music outside the (jewel) box- Pandora Radio

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When I imported all my CDs to my computer I made a bunch of folders and put favorite individual songs in the appropriate folders. Like Fast, Medium, Slow, Great etc. I've really enjoyed those playlists. I've added and subtracted songs and folders over the years.

That was then-now there's my iPhone and Pandora Radio. Pandora is the logical extension of the Music Genome Project. Follow the link for a more complete explanation of the MGP. This edited explanation of the project comes from the Wiki:

The Music Genome Project, created in January 2000, is an effort to "capture the essence of music at the fundamental level" using almost 400 attributes to describe songs and a complex mathematical algorithm to organize them.

A given song is represented by a list of attributes containing approximately 150 "genes". Each gene corresponds to a characteristic of the music, for example, gender of lead vocalist, level of distortion on the electric guitar, type of background vocals, etc.

Given the set of characteristics of one or more songs, a list of other similar songs is constructed.

To create a song's genome, it is analyzed by a musician in a process that takes 20 to 30 minutes per song.

Since 2000, jillions of songs have been analyzed.

Enter Pandora Radio. This is a free web service which will stream songs to your computer or iPhone. You can build stations around an individual artist or set of artists.

Once you build a "station" Pandora takes over. When you first go to the web page or boot the iPhone app Pandora will play a song from the artist you've designated for that station. But that's just the beginning. From there Pandora uses the Music Genome Project information to pick out the next song to play. And so on and so on.

You can further hone your selections by giving a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" to their selection. Your preferences are saved and reflected in subsequent selections.

Here's what my home page looks like:


Under "Texas Folk" I have Guy Clark, Robert Keen, Nanci Griffith etc. Keep in mind though, they are only the jumping off point. I'll hear all sorts of folks who are deemed "similar". And If I hear a song I really like I can give it a "thumbs up" and it will be played more frequently and others like it will be featured.

My experience is that Pandora is on target 98% of the time. I am constantly introduced to folks who I may or may not have heard of before who are quickly becoming favorites.

Enter the iPhone. There's a Pandora app for the iPhone. So now I pick a station, plug in my earphones and go for a walk. Never knowing exactly who I'm going to hear.

At home Richard and I have been hooking our iPhones up to the stereo in the house and listening for evenings at a time.
"Who's that?"
"I don't know - Shazam it!" (You'll have to read up on Shazam yourself.)

So, thanks to Pandora I'm hearing all sorts of new folks. Try it on your computer or your iPhone. It's a guided journey to folks you know and folks you don't. And don't worry about music industry revenue, there's a button in the corner of the page where you can zipideedoodah buy the selection-Jewel case not included.
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