Pandora - Personal Radio Station

[Andrew]

I came across this a couple of days ago. Basically, you type in an artist you like and it creates a playlist ("personal radio station") for you, based on similar music:


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.


They've mixed this in with what other people like (the playlists others have generated and their feedback). (I imagine the 'dynamic' data they collect in this way will be at least as valuable as their static analysis.)

Only had a quick play, but seems to work well & very interesting.


Ever since we started the Music Genome Project (http://www.pandora.com/mgp.shtml), our friends would ask:

Can you help me discover more music that I'll like?

Those questions often evolved into great conversations. Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs.

We created Pandora so that we can have that same kind of conversation with you.


Link (http://www.pandora.com/)

[redhavoc]

Yeh, Pandora is awesome. I listened to it all summer after studying the Music Genome project as part of my course in the last Summer term.

[Andrew]

Pandora will be blocked in the UK from 15 Jan (http://www.breakzdjs.com/2008/01/07/pandora-blocked-in-uk-15-jan/).

hi, it’s Tim,

This is an email I hoped I would never have to send.

As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. […]

We have been told to sign these totally unworkable license rates or switch off, non-negotiable…so that is what we are doing. Streaming illegally is just not in our DNA, and we have to take the threats of legal action seriously. Lest you think this is solely an international problem, you should know that we are also fighting for our survival here in the US, in the face of a crushing increase in web radio royalty rates, which if left unchanged, would mean the end of Pandora.

We know what an epicenter of musical creativity and fan support the UK has always been, which makes the prospect of not being able to launch there and having to block our first listeners all the more upsetting for us. […]

Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008.

Again, on behalf of all of us at Pandora, I’m very, very sorry.

-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)

Shit.