RtS: Pandora music generator
 

Rank the Swank - Live Music and Albums


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Pandora music generator


2/5/06 [/color]
Pandora


The Lowdown
A new website that, through the Music Genome project, plays streaming audio based around your music preferences

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The Scene
If you haven't explored Pandora yet, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Tom came across a news article about it and I had the chance to explore it this morning.

To start a channel for yourself, all you have to do is type in an artist or a song that you like. The extremely extensive collection will then stream similar songs by similar artists as defined by their very specific and scientific "Music Genome Project," which judges songs on many variables. As the songs play, you can rate them and further narrow down the genre and style of your station. You can also add other songs to the station, and widen the span (say, a slow acoustic song and another with a thumping hip-hop base.)

In only an hour of playing around with it, I can say that the coolest thing about all of this is that it brings artists you may not know into your scope. Pandora has everything from the Beatles to tiny indie artists you'd never have heard of (and they're seeking more of that, too.) If there's anything you like, you can add it to favorites, make a channel around it, or click a link to buy it on iTunes or Amazon.

There is a free version, which has advertisements (mostly for iTunes) in the borders (and will likely add some to the streaming as it becomes more popular.) There is a membership that will keep ads away ($36 for a year sounds very reasonable.)

I love it! It's quite amazing and I'm already finding new artists and songs. I started a station around "The Luckiest" by Ben Folds-- and it brought some artists I sort of knew but not well enough (i.e. Rufu Wainwright) and some artists I didn't know at all (i.e. Papas Fritas and Alejandro Escovedo and Edie Carey.)

Swank abounds-- and the ability to define your own personal swank is a welcome option.

Oh no, yet another thing to make me buy more music - If KCRW, Amazon.com, and Jesse weren't bad enough! Curse you!

I of course, am bookmarking the link now...

I read about this the other day but haven't explored it yet. My first concern is that, the muslic I like is often obscure and the music stations usually are a bit too mainstream for me. But, I will have to check it out and ssee what it comes up with. It should be an interesting experiment.

I first tried this a couple months ago. I'll have to try it again to see if it's improved, but I didn't have much luck with it. Maybe it's because I have wacky musical interests, but they didn't have much by artists I like, which means they weren't able to recommend stuff.

It's a new-ish thing, so the longer they've been around the more they've amassed. I have funky tastes, too (mostly indie these days) but they were still able to accomodate me.

For instance, I have one called "Pink Martini"-- it's all in the style of the Seattle swanksters, and fit enough for any LoT function.

They still don't have a fair number of the things I listen to. Oh sure, they have Brian Setzer and Squirrel Nut Zippers, but not a lot of depth in that genre.

This did prompt me to give this another whirl. And then I realized I'm probably the only person on the planet whose "station" would play the Ramones and Benny Goodman back-to-back.

I don't know, my iPod currently mixes Disney ride throughs, electronica, Punk Rock, Samba, and French Caberet tunes. Best seguw yet has been Tibetan monk chanting followed by Siouxsie and the Banshees.

I love my iPod

Sweet site. :snap:

I'm having my doubts here...I put in Oingo Boingo. I got Don Henley, Yellowcard and Phil Collins. Ummmmmmmm.

But it's looking up, just got the Cure.