December 7, 2005
Pandora.com - custom radio stations for the masses
Link - Pandora
I guess you could call Pandora a “music-recommending” program. However, instead of the typical “you like this band and other people that like this band also like these bands so you’ll probably like these bands” approach of websites like Last.fm or even Amazon, Pandora uses “so-phisticated techniques” (in the voice of the DNA-strand from Jurassic Park) to determine what elements (such as “fast rhythms” “solid bass-line” or “acoustic piano”) of music are in each song. By combining these elements across an artist’s entire catalog, some idea of “what kind of music they play” can be established much more accurately than any genre label that might be slapped on them.
I was impressed at first. I have a few gripes about it though. They don’t have much in the way of independent or otherwise non-mainstream music so if you’re looking to discover new artists that you haven’t heard of before, you might come up empty-handed. Also, some of the categorizing of the music was a bit… off. A few songs that played were radically different from the style of the artist I started with and weren’t very appealing at all. That’s not to say I have a closed mind when it comes to music. On the contrary, I listen to many different kinds of music as long as they’re not whiny or country (the latter is really a subcategory of the former but I thought I’d mention both of them specifically for the benefit of those that might be confused). Actually maybe I’m not the best person to review this website because I’m not a fan of most mainstream music and that seems to be all that it’s pulling up.
The bottom line: give it a try. It loads on the homepage and you only need to type in one artist to get started. Let me know what you think.
