Music lovers check out www.pandora.com. Very cool. You can make your own music station by putting in an artist or song and pandora then uses the Music Genome Project to “program” the station with stuff you might like. You can give songs a thumbs up or thimbs down to help train it. You can try it for free for 10 hours, and if you decide you dig it, it’s only $36 a year!
It’s quite in depth in it’s methodology. Let’s take a call from a listener! Hello, you’re on the air!
Jess: I don’t know that I would want to pay for such a service. I just read Wannika’s blogs and steal their taste
Heath: I would consider paying for it if it impressed me enough in the 10 hour trial
Jess: plus, I don’t really want recommendations that are similar to things I like except, I’m not sure what this means in this context:
We take your input […] to create stations that play songs that are musically similar to what you’ve told us. That’s it; only the music counts. We don’t care how popular the artist is, who’s backing them, and we don’t care which genre bin they usually belong in. Only the music matters.
Jess: “musically similar” – but how is that determined if genre is out? I mean, how can it know what I like about a given artist? It might think I LOVE the lyrics of something that I only like for the crunchy guitar value.
Jess: Q: How do I find out why you’re playing something?
Click the album art and select “why did you play this song” and we’ll give you an explanation in musicological terms as to why the current song is similar to the input you’ve given us up to that point.
Jess: maybe that answers my question
Heath: It tells you. Like I put in The Beatles and Styx, and now when I click on “why is this song playing” it says
Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features mild rhythmic syncopation, a subtle use of vocal harmony, major key tonality, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation and an elecric guitar solo.
Jess: dude
Heath: So I’m sure the more you train it and the more artists you put in the better it would get and more varied (if you so desired). Of course you could also make a bunch of spearate stations to keep different types of stuff separated.
Jess: maybe it’ll tell me why I like what i like. weird
So you there you go. As usual I highly encourage everyone to research and check it out themselves to see if it’s right for you. Seems pretty damn cool to me. Check out the FAQ.