Pandora

Originally, I intended to write this week’s column on the Oprah Winfrey/James Frey stir. But thumbing through this week’s Rolling Stone, I found something that, to me, is far more interesting than its controversial Kanye cover. Flipping through, I came across a short article on customizable Internet radio stations—stations designed to turn the listener on to new music.

A little research led me to Pandora.com, a music-streaming website founded by the Music Genome Project, which exists solely to expose you to music that you didn’t know you love. Of course, Pandora is but one of many similar websites which, collectively, are being hailed as the next great viable threat to traditional, terrestrial radio (a la the iPod and Satellite Radio). As a music director for a terrestrial station, I wanted to investigate to assess the credibility of this threat.

The Music Genome Project operates on the belief that “every individual has unique musical tastes, and that music discovery tools need to have a rich understanding of music to account for this diversity,” according to a statement on their website. It was with this understanding that they undertook the most comprehensive analysis of music ever attempted, and the results are staggering.

Every day, professional music-listeners with advanced degrees in music theory sit around an office in Oakland, CA and analyze music from almost every genre imaginable. Spending twenty minutes with each song, they categorize up to 400 different components of each song, from the vocals to the syncopation, the influences to the vamping and tonality. If may help to think of it as DNA analysis of each particular song. “It’s ridiculously academic,” MGP co-founder Tim Westergren told Rolling Stone, “but the premise is to find out what you like about music and give you more.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But do long, tedious hours of hard work from these music geeks pay off? I hit up Pandora, and typed in the name of my favorite song of all time: “Life By The Drop” by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Because of the licensing agreements that apply to streaming audio stations, they are not allowed to play any song on demand. In other words, Pandora can’t play “Life By The Drop” right away, but apparently, if you listen long enough, it will eventually be played. Instead, Pandora introduced me to a band called Campfire Girls, with their song “P.F.A.M.G.” Not bad. Pandora said I’d like the “mellow rock instrumentation, the acoustic sonority and extensive vamping.” I don’t know what all that means, but the song was cool and sounded a little like “Life By The Drop.”

Next I heard “Baby Left Me,” by surf-guitar legend Dick Dale. I’d never heard it, but I liked it. Then came Portastatic with the acoustic version of “San Andreas.” I’d never heard any of these songs, and I’d only heard OF Dick Dale, but Pandora was working for me. It also gave me links to iTunes to buy the songs I like, and Amazon to purchase the whole CD.

Pandora’s ability to cross genres to find music that you may like gives it an advantage over your favorite FM station. Its charm is that it’s all about you, the listener. But it falls short where the iPod does: a lot of terrestrial radio’s appeal is generated between the records, in its other content. In short, Pandora’s a fun toy, but I’m not ready to give up my radio altogether.

-From Pulse
February 2, 2006