WEBmikey: Pandora knows

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Pandora knows
12.06.2005 9:28 PM \| Link	It seems I can never have enough sources of music - I like to keep buying CDs to listen to in my car, I keep my iPod (plus my iPod shuffle) full of cool tunes, I like to hear music podcasts (especially Japanese indie music), and I still tune in internet radio stations every now and then. But now there's one more, and it's pretty amazing. Pandora seems at first to be your typical streaming music website, but rather than using simple collaborative filtering (which means if several people like Song A and also Song B, and you like Song A, you will probably like Song B), Pandora is driven by a huge database called the Music Genome Project. Thousands of songs are collected with specific information about each song, so you can tell Pandora a group you like, and it will find other songs that sound similar. It's way better (and much more specific) than choosing by common likes and dislikes, because if I say I want to hear songs like Saint Etienne, it's smart enough to choose music with female vocals, keyboards, and so on! If I'm feeling like My Bloody Valentine, it will pick songs with jangly, dissonant guitar. I'm not too keen on the all-Flash interface, but the music selection is so cool. I've always wanted to listen to music this way! I wish I could plug in my iTunes library so I could randomize the music I own based on the same data. Visit site: Pandora Labels: life


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