It’s been 20 years or so since I gave up on radio and popular music. But with the Iraq war and my activism in dissent, I’ve come across several artists I like. I bought the last two Dixie Chicks albums to spite the reactionary nationalist Country Music crowd. I really like Taking the Long Way, which I bought after watching and listening to Not Ready To Make Nice. I like most of the songs on the album, particularly I Like It, Voice Inside My Head, Everybody Knows, I Hope, Easy Silence, … good album. Robert Cray’s song Twenty is awesome and caused me to buy the album of the same name. I like that one too, though some of the lyrics are a bit flat. Then Pink did Dear Mr. President, so I bought the album I’m Not Dead. I like that one too. I get a big kick out of Stupid Girls, ‘Cuz I Can, and U + Ur Hand. Heh.
I don’t like every song on every one of these albums, and I still can’t appreciate Neal Young’s Living With War (click the top right image to get to videos for playback.) My initial reaction: That gawdawful noise comes from what used to be instruments before they got left out in the rain and run over by a train, and he needs to be straight when he writes the lyrics. Or stoned. Whatever he wasn’t when he wrote these. I appreciate the sentiments he expresses, but damn… Secondary reaction: look at the web site. I’ll try the music again when I get my Sennheiser 595s (on order) and see if that brings out whatever I’m missing in the music.
Then I ran across Sarah McLachlin’s World On Fire and bought AfterGlow. Wow. I promptly bought Fumbling Towards Ecstasy and Surfacing. Wow. Incredible voice, intelligent lyrics, and very good music. Now I’m interested in listening to music for its own sake.
But I don’t know quite what I like (but I know it when I hear it), none of the usual genres (Country, Rock, R&B, HipHop) precisely match my tastes, and I want control over what I listen to. Pandora seems to fill the bill.
Pandora is the music discovery service that helps you find new music based on your old and current favorites. Create custom internet radio stations, …
I’ve signed up for the free service and entered a few songs into my ‘station’. So far, I like it, but I clearly need to enter a lot more songs to guide it to music that better matches my eclectic tastes. When I started with a couple of Dixie Chicks songs and one Sarah McLachlan song, it picked too much twang. The more songs you add to your ‘station,’ the better. I’m digging through memories, doing internet searchs on song fragments, etc, but I think it will settle out pretty soon into an eclectic mix of music that mostly appeals to me.
Pandora is an automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by The Music Genome Project. … Users begin by entering a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that it thinks are musically similar. Users are then able to provide feedback on the individual song choices—approval or disapproval, which the system takes into account for future selections.
Over 400 different musical aspects are considered when selecting the next song. Examples of these are rhythm syncopation, key tonality, vocal harmonies and displayed instrumental proficiency.
The service has two subscription plans: a free subscription supported by ads, and a fee-based subscription without these ads.
Choosing one artist results in all that artist’s catalogued styles being used as a starting point, which may include those which may not be considered representative. Selecting representative tracks by the artist may give closer to the intended results.
Each track played can be responded to in 4 ways:
- Thumbs up – Play more like this
- No response – No change in preference
- Zzzz – Bored with this track, do not play for a month
- Thumbs down – Do not play this track again, play less that are similar. Also skips if any skips are left
- A second negative response to the same artist will ban that artist from the selected playlist unless that artist has been manually added to the playlist or if it has recieved one or more positive votes
There’s more in the WikiPedia entry, plus a FAQ.
I’ve created two stations so far:
- 01 Eclectic: the first station I created, where I attempted to pre-load it with specific songs/pieces and then guide it with thumbs up/down. The pieces I chose were plucked from memory, recent pieces I’ve liked, and so on. They varied wildly in genre and genome. Results have been…mixed at best. This approach casts too wide a net and frankly if I were Pandora, I’d be confused about what to pick too. Lesson: create Stations that keep within some identifiable boundaries so you can get stuff you’re in the mood for.
- 02 Vocals/Acoustic. I’ll probably rename it a few times, but for this one I pre-loaded it with artists instead of specific pieces. The artists were chosen via Google results on “If you like Sarah McLaughlin” plus some recommendations from a Best Buy employee who is really into her music. This station is a few minutes old as of this writing but so far, the results are a lot better.
I’ve just started using it, so take this all for what it’s worth. I have no way of knowing what you’ll hear when you click the links and be advised that Pandora is making the choices based on a database that includes mainstream and non-mainstream sources….
I just picked up a used copy of Robert Cray Band – Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark today and I think I’m going to like it as well. Also picked up a copy of John Lennon Legend- The Very Best Of John Lennon. Had to have it.
