A little off-topic for ComparisonEngines, but I thought you’d appreciate this one…
Pandora is a really cool service. Through the Music Genome Project, the company has broken down individual tracks (not albums) by multiple attributes…and we’re not just talking about 3 or 4 attributes…more like 50+. They have a team of musicians listening to music all day to add more and more and more songs to the project database. From the website:
Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.
Simply put, Pandora is your personalized internet radio station. You set up a station by entering an artist or song. You can later add other artists or songs that you like. Pandora then plays a continuous stream of music based on the attributes of the songs or artists you selected. For example, I entered DMB, R.E.M., and Coldplay (predictable, huh?) and my station has picked out tracks because they “feature a subtle use of vocal harmony, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, major key tonality, and many other similarities.” In other words, I’m now listening to A Lifetime by Better than Ezra, We Laugh Indoors by Death Cab for Cutie as well as lesser known songs like Monkey Suit by the Pernice Brothers and Come Around by Rhett Miller. You rate songs with a thumbs up or down as the music streams and the radio station learns what you like…eventually creating your perfect radio station.
The company just added a feature that lets users post radio stations on their blogs (although it’s not working with a number of the major players). Smart idea. Pandora should definitely figure out a way to hook up with MySpace…both companies are all about expressing individuality.
Let me put this another way – as opposed to Pandora going to MySpace asking for a partnership (or figuring out ways to get MySpace users to adopt Pandora), MySpace should proactively reach out to Pandora. As I play around with Pandora, I realize the power is in it’s ability to come up with the long tail, the artists I normally wouldn’t know because they don’t have the power of mainstream distribution. This is the point of MySpace’s music offering- to allow indie artists to get music distributed in a market that’s all about promoting hits, not lesser known acts. Pandora offers a perfect opportunity for MySpace to expand the reach of its indie artists.
Business Model?
You can test out the service for free, but after a couple songs, you either sign up for free (with ads) or pay a $3 – $4/month subscription (no ads). As of right now, there are hardly any no ads, so it’s a good time to test it out. The company also makes a little money off of the Amazon and iTunes affiliate programs.
So far I’m loving it. Give Pandora a try…
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The only problem I’m having with Pandora is that it doesn’t include classical music…but I still have Classical 102.1. Listening to Mozart in the morning right now (weekdays at 9am).
It’ll be interesting to see how Pandora incorporates ads…they aren’t collecting user data in terms of preferences. If I remember correctly, they asked for my name (COPPA), email, zip code (internet radio regulations), and date of birth. If they want to add relevant ads, they are going to have to ask for a bit more.
I liked Pandora for the most part when I tried it last year. The only concern I had with it was its inability to incorporate the emotional aspects of a song (we can turn music into a science all we want but many music lovers, especially in genre’s such as country and folk, it’s about being touched in a place deep inside… a place where 1′s and 0′s have little, if any, meaning or value).
For example, when I search Pandora for Kathy Mattea’s “Where’ve You Been”. The message I receive talks about finding similar songs based on on tonality, tempo, etc. — digitization is probably ideal for making those associations.
The day Pandora can play “Where’ve You Been”, however, then have it recommend Patty Loveless’s “How Can I Help You Say Goodbye”, I’ll be sold. Although I could be wrong, I would also assume when that happens that it was a fellow human being who connected the two rather than any sort of “emotion detection” software.