Wed 10 May 2006
Ok Funkstas! A buddy forwarded me a link to this new site the other day. Quite literally if you have speakers (or headphones at work) and a web browser, that’s all you need to listen to heaps of unlimited radio. Literally this is all you do is:
- Go to www.pandora.com
- Type in the name of your favourite artist when prompted
- Music starts playing music in a Flash plug in by (or similar to) that artist
- Now you have your own personal radio station based on music similar to that artist.
The audio quality is good, but the simplicity of this application is just staggering. Within 15 seconds, you’re up and running. And no other site I know can boast that. I was a veteran of www.launch.com before they were bought otu by Yahoo and insisted that everyone be American. In fairness, Launch was a better service only because it was more complex in its rating of artists and tracks. Pandora only lets you ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ a track and not black list an artist, which would be nice.
Obviously, Pandora could be the greatest thing in the world, but will rise and fall based on the catalogue of the music avaiable. Well, in terms of rock, so far so good. No problems finding Motley Crue, Motorhead or Turbonegro. I’m told it’s not so good for doof doof, but that’s a good thing as far as i’m concerned!
What really is amazing is also that they say that they recommend music not basic on ‘what other fans of artist X like . . ‘ but apparently the Genome project (of which Pandora resulted) suggests music based on musical characteristics, pitch, tone etc. I will need to read up more on this because I am heavily skeptical, but it certainly is providing different results to Launch. Well in the sense that they’re all melodically similar.
According to their site, the Musical Genome Project participants have "Over the past 5 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." So there, something a little different!
You will notice a little further down the page is a list of my 5 favourite tracks on my Pandora stations. This too is a cute little feature. It should also be noted, these tracks don’t describe my musical taste to a tee, but it’s close! So make your work day a little bit more interesting and visit Pandora.com. It friggin rocks.