Pandora, Part 1

September 27, 2007 on 10:36 am | In Uncategorized |

I recently bought a Sonos system to distribute our music through our house. Sonos is an amazing integration of wireless music distribution technology that will be the subject of some future entries on Music4Peter but I mention it because our Sonos package came with 30 day subscriptions to a pair of online music services, Pandora and Phapsody. Here is Part 1 of my review of Pandora:

Pandora is a little difficult to describe because it is unlike most other music services, internet radio stations or online music stores. It is based on the Music Genome Project, the brainchild of Tim Westergren, a pianist and former film composer, and it attempts to identify a set of traits or “genes” to describe music. The set of traits used is quite large – over 400 – the Music Genome Project does not officially publish the whole list, but diligent amateur investigators have uncovered most of the traits and they may be seen on Wikipedia . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Music_Genome_Project_attributes

The diverse range of musical “genes” can be seen by examples such as “Accordion playing” “Angular Melodies” “Bowed Strings”, “Duo Rapping”, “Lyrics by a Rap Icon”, “Punk Roots”, “Use of Horn Accents”.

The Music Genome Project doesn’t apply the same traits of to all musical genres, so each individual genre gets its own subset. Currently, the supported genres are Pop, Rock, Jazz, R&B, Hip-hop/Rap, Country, Folk, Electronica/Dance, New Age/Ambient and Latin/Brazilian

The Project has a staff of specially-trained workers whose entire job consists of listening to music and discerning these characteristics. A California newspaper, The East Bay Express, had a fascinating article on the process they use for each piece of music

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/2006-01-11/news/pandora-s-box

The result of all that intricate work is a huge database of songs and their traits. And whether or not you buy into their theory that this represents a “genome” of music, there is no denying that if you specify a song you like, they have an uncanny ability to hand you a list of other songs you will also like.

The front end to that music discovery experience is called Pandora, and it’s the subject of my next entry.