pandora

Have you ever tried internet radio? It’s the place where you can tune to music of you choice. Most of the channels there are predefined and you don’t have much to say in choice of music. Though, today with the n numbers of channel available, you can choose station which matches your taste the most.

Pandora is the next big thing in online radio scene. It’s a radio of your own. You can choose what kind of music it plays. You can select the song or artist name. and then it plays all the songs or artists which have same kind of music. With every song you can make this choice more and more accurate.

This is how it works-

• Go to Pandora website: http://www.pandora.com/
• You might need to open an account there to enjoy it full. Right now only US citizens are allowed to open an account. But in this connected world you know it’s not that difficult to break this rule.
• You will reach a window as shown.
• Select the artist name or song name. [I chose Scorpion for the illustration purpose.]
• Then Pandora will search its database for artist name Scorpion or a famous song named Scorpion. It will show you the initial result.
• If the result shown was your expected result, it will start finding the characteristics of the artist and song and display the same for you.
• Pandora will play one demo song then and then if you like it, it will start playing more songs of the same kind.
• Anytime you can stop the song or rate it. By rating you improve the selection process.
• Enjoy the continuous music.

The technology is currently used by Pandora to play music for internet users based on their preferences. Users are invited to create "radio stations" by entering artists or song titles. Pandora then uses an algorithm to select and play music similar to the users' selections. Since the algorithm selects songs on the basis of musical features, rather than artist popularity or record sales, many users have lauded Pandora for its ability to "recommend" unfamiliar songs that fit a user's preferences. Obscure artists may submit their music to the Music Genome Project in a bid to become better known. [wiki]

Music Genome Project
The Music Genome Project, created in January 2000, is an effort founded by Tim Westergren and spearheaded by a group of musicians and technicians to "capture the essence of music at the fundamental level" by using over 400 attributes to describe songs.

This is what the mind behind this project says about them [link] –

"On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

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.

Over the past 6 years, we've carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

It has been quite an adventure, you could say a little crazy - but now that we've created this extraordinary collection of music analysis, we think we can help be your guide as you explore your favorite parts of the music universe.

We hope you enjoy the journey."