Pandora & Music Genome
This is the greatest thing in a long time that I have accidentally stumbled upon in while. Matter of fact I would call this even better than sliced bread. So, as I was noting in another blog thread here (at least in the comments), I needed to find some big band era swing type of music and that while I do enjoy the sound of the music, I am really not familiar enough with it to be able to out and just by a CD – if I had found such anyway. On top of that, I am horrible with remember song names and performers. So I did a search for just things when I had a few minutes between things this morning thinking that I would see what I could find in such a genre and go from there. In my search list, and the only one that seemed to point to something I could stream to get an example of the sound and make sure it was I was wanting to pursue was this link to Pandora.
So, I clicked the link, and then you have to select the music genre and a song you want to hear. I put in big band swing. And instantly I was connecting to my own personal streaming radio station that only played big band swing music. I was impressed and listened to it for a LONG time this morning, despite my generally not liking folks to use our precious bandwidth with streaming types of applications here at the office. I was so impressed, I had to check into it a little bit more given the other options they offered. Turns out Pandora is tied to a Music Genome Project.
Actually, more specifically Pandora is the specialized player function that is available given the genome project. The genome project basically takes all sorts of attributes from music and maps those out for each piece of music they have the repository. Some songs have as few as a 150 genetic markers about the music while others may have as many as 400 or 500 markers. The markers include things as simple as sex of the singer, or even if there is vocals to things as complex as tempo and how much distortion there is with the electric guitar, if of course present. So what does this all mean?
Well, largely that means I can make a few selections and then get a personalized streaming radio station from Pandora that closely matches those selections. For instance, I have always liked Johnny Cash and the general hard-driving style of country he had as well as the his ballads and of course the outlaw old style country he was associated with in the last 60′s though the 70′s. Simply by putting in Johnny Cash and asking it to give a radio station like that, I was able to spend my lunch listening to Johnny, Willie, Waylon and several other notables that fell into that general style. Also, with each song I have the opportunity to give a thumbs up, thumbs down, or skip it completely. I presume, based on what I have seen, that as you do this, it takes those selections into account with future songs it serves up.
The really great thing though is I can get this mix of songs served to me without getting stuck into a rut with listening to a single CD – that I then tend to get stuck on and skip over to only the three or four songs that are most appealing to me from the CD until I just bore myself with. This way I also get a few different new introductions to music I didn’t know before – that generally I like. I can honestly say that I would pay for this service and plan to make a donation as soon as I figure out where to do it. Oh, it has an option to go to an I-phone – which the first thing that I have seen that has actually made me even consider that as a possibility to get – though not likely. Anyway, go check it out and let me know what you think.
