| Saturday, December 31, 2005 |
| Best in Music - Pandora |
Thanks to Leslie Walker for the article
If Internet dating sites can match people by trying to compute the elements of attraction, why can't songs be matched with people in the same way?
That's the idea behind Pandora, a new Web service that tries to match music you like with other tunes that share the same qualities. Pandora Media, the company behind the service, has been selling music-discovery software for years to big retailers such as Best Buy. Its Pandora service is the company's first offering based on an unusual musical study it dubbed the Music Genome Project.
Over the past five years, a team of analysts studied songs played by more than 10,000 artists and attempted to classify their traits -- not just which instruments are played and what the rhythm is like, but the melodies, lyrics and hundreds of other variables. Much as genes shape humans, the analysts theorized that certain describable qualities shape music and therefore should govern our musical tastes.
As implemented in Pandora, this technology works like a personalized Internet radio station. The site creates a playlist for you after analyzing a particular artist or song that you say you like, then streams the music that it thinks matches your tastes. And it does a great job. |
posted by Brett Crockett @ 10:56 AM   |
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