PANDORA: F-ING INCREDIBLE
This post is long overdue. Have you used Pandora yet? If not, your life is about to get a whole lot better. I discovered Pandora a while back and then for some reason stopped using it. But I moved into a new apartment recently and didn’t have my music hard drive set up yet; PANDORA TO THE RESCUE!
Pandora is the face of the Music Genome Project. They approach music the way scientists approach DNA–assembled from a set of common and intertwined building blocks. Basically, Pandora works like this: You give Pandora an artist or song (let’s call this the “seed”). It takes that seed and creates a radio station around it, analyzing your seed’s DNA and surrounding it with its genetic cousins.
Why is this amazing? Because it actually works. The recommendations are really good, and Pandora even explains and justifies its choices.
Example: Sigur Ros
I type in “Sigur Ros” as my seed, Pandora thinks for a second and starts playing music. It starts with a Sigur Ros song, then moves on to Ayanamsha by Eyvind Kang. I have no idea who that is, but Pandora explains “…we’re playing this track because it features acoustic rock instrumentation, acoustic sonority, extensive vamping, groove based composition and mixed minor & major key tonality.” The music is good, relevant to the seed, and Pandora provides the rationale behind its pick. Works for me.
Pandora even touched my personal life recently. The other day, my new roommate asked me “Hey man, what’s ‘vamping’? Apparently I like music that includes a lot of ‘vamping’.” I love that Pandora actually sparked a conversation about how music works with my totally non-musical roommate.
Pandora, you rock.
LINKS:
Pandora, on the web: www.pandora.com
Pandora, on wikipedia: Pandora (music service)
NOTE: Audiokio has no ties to Pandora. I happen to like their service, but they have in no way compensated us for this post (except by providing an awesome internet radio portal!).
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