Monday, June 4, 2007

Opening Pandora's Box

Have you heard of the website Pandora? It is a super cool site where you enter your favorite music and then the website plays similar music. It is like your own personal internet radio station that plays music you like. What a great way to get exposed to new music! You can even buy songs you like directly from iTunes (very smart). The brains behind the website is the Music Genome Project© in which each song and artist is analyzed for particular musical attributes which they refer to as "genes". Ani DiFranco, one of my favorite artists, is classified as "folk roots, acoustic sonority, major key tonality, a good does of acousitc guitar pickin' and a dynamic female vocalist".


This website is an excellent example of what Web 2.0 can do. It lets you guide the music you want to hear. You can give feedback by rating each song thumbs up or thumbs down. I believe that it is a learning website as it learns which songs are most appreciated by the audience. It offers the ability to meet people who like the same music and there is a blog.


If you like music, you should check it out.

2 comments:

Rebecca Schroeder said...

I heard about this on NPR a few weeks back but never got around to checking it out until I read about it here on your blog. We've been playing around with it and creating "new stations" all night. Pandora's Box indeed!

ering said...

The Pandora folks were in town a few weeks ago but we missed the event (we were getting ready for our yurting experience). I love the whole concept of the Music Genome. It is fun to check out the "genes" of the music you like.
Thanks for commenting!