Pandora Internet Radio is a Web 2.0 music discovery website. New users are asked to provide a list of their favorite artists or songs. Pandora utilizes technology developed by the music genome project to create a custom Internet radio station comprised of songs that should appeal to the user. While a song is playing, the user can provide feedback, which is used to fine-tune which tracks play next.
The Music Genome Project uses a manual process to create a signature from a song consisting of 150-500 “genes”. Each gene represents an attribute of the song, and is recorded as a number 1-5. The genes of songs can be compared using a distance function to identify songs which contain similar traits, and presumable will appeal to like audiences.
Users can share their station with friends, and can find new friends by finding other listeners who enjoy similar types of music.
At its surface, Pandora is a free service, supported by advertisements. They also provide an annual subscription service that allows users to listen to advertisement-free music on Sprint mobiles or Internet radio devices, such as Logitech’s Squeezebox. The annual service costs $36.00 per year.
Users can choose to make their stations available to others to listen to. You can search shared stations to find songs that you otherwise would never find.
Users are provided free webspace to blog about their favorite music and share links to specific songs, or stations.
3 comments:
Ted - thanks for posting this. I think it is pretty cool to see some of the technical advances from biology spilling over into computer science.
Thanks Ted.
Pandora is great and a terrific way to share social trends and likes/dislikes in music. The genome (genes) idea for assessing music with similar traits is quite interesting and fairly accurate from my limited use of Pandora so far...
Matt.
I have had a Pandora account for over a year, but haven't had time to keep up with my own preferences, let alone enjoy those selections that are recommended by Pandora. That is probably why their recommendations fall short of my preferences.
They interpreted my fondness for a certain sound and artist, such as Emerson Lake and Palmer's "From the Beginning" a bit differently than I had expected. Hits like Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" appeal to me in how they make me feel and it is hard to find similar tunes that have the same rousing qualities.
Fortunately, they send me email at regular intervals, reminding me to focus on the finer things in life...like music! *grins*
Have fun! *waves*
Cynthia Calongne
Lyr Lobo in Second Life
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