The Ease of Internet Radio

Ok, I admit it... I love a good deal! Getting something for a discount always makes me feel good. Getting something for free is even better. And the best thing I have found lately is Pandora. Pandora is free internet radio. That alone is nice, but what makes it really cool is that Pandora is part of the Music Genome Project (mgp). What's that? Pandora describes it as:

Pandora is based on the Music Genome Project, the most sophisticated taxonomy of musical information ever collected. It represents over seven years of analysis by our trained team of musicologists, and spans almost a century of music (and soon several centuries!).

Each song in the Music Genome Project is analyzed using up to 400 distinct musical characteristics by a trained music analyst. These attributes capture not only the musical identity of a song, but also the many significant qualities that are relevant to understanding the musical preferences of listeners. The typical music analyst working on the Music Genome Project has a four-year degree in music theory, composition or performance, has passed through a selective screening process and has completed intensive training in the Music Genome's rigorous and precise methodology. To qualify for the work, analysts must have a firm grounding in music theory, including familiarity with a wide range of styles and sounds. All analysis is done on location.

The Music Genome Project's database is built using a methodology that includes the use of precisely defined terminology, a consistent frame of reference, redundant analysis, and ongoing quality control to ensure that data integrity remains reliably high. Pandora does not use machine-listening or other forms of automated data extraction.

The Music Genome Project is updated on a continual basis with the latest releases, emerging artists, and an ever-deepening collection of catalogue titles.

By utilizing the wealth of musicological information stored in the Music Genome Project, Pandora recognizes and responds to each individual's tastes. The result is a much more personalized radio experience - stations that play music you'll love - and nothing else.

So you ask, "How does it work?" You go to http://www.pandora.com and enter the name of an artist or song. Pandora locates that song (or in some cases, a song with similar characteristics) in its database and begins playing it. The neat part comes with the next song in the queue. It is selected based on similar musical characteristics to the first song you picked (this is where mgp comes in). If you don't like a song, just give it a thumbs down; Pandora moves to the next song. Two thumbs for the same artist in one hour will ban that artist from the virtual station you create. When you like a song, give it a thumbs up. The characteristics of that song will help determine other songs that will play on your virtual station. A no vote is neutral.

The site offers other cool things as well. Clicking on an album cover gets you choices. You can find out about the song, artist, or album. If you like the song you can buy it directly from iTunes or Amazon. The access to information is broad and user-friendly. For example, I clicked on album information on Another Run Around the Sun (by Ben Taylor). I was surprised to learn the album was produced by Kevin Bacon. As we know, there is the "7 degrees of Kevin Bacon" in all that we do, but I digress.

Want to know if any of your friends are using Pandora? There is a nice feature that lets you connect to your address book (in AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc...) and search for friends who also have an account. You can then check or uncheck friends you want to add. When I did this, I found our dear friends Todd & Carolyn are using Pandora. Once my friends are added I can see their most recent stations and their most recent bookmarks. Cool!

There are many more features the site offers. It would take many words to describe them all, and I think you'd have a better time exploring yourself. So, I'll leave you to it...

If you get hooked on Pandora like I am, you may decide that you don't want to have to keep your browser open all the time. I use a light application called Open Pandora. It connects to you Pandora account in a stand-alone window. Many of the Pandora Extras (friends, album/song/artist info, etc...) is not available in Open Pandora but you can still vote on songs and create new stations.

If you're interested in how we learned about Pandora, the story is simple. Mike and I were going through the Start Menu and Installed Programs on his new computer to determine which bloatware to remove. We googled each item that wasn't familiar. Pandora was on the All Programs list... We looked it up and were hooked.

Smiles!