Pandora knows me better than I do

Published on December 23, 2005 By PJ_ In Websites

A friend turned me on to Pandora recently. That's the internet radio site that tailors its playlist to your musical tastes, based on attributes of the songs you tell it you like. (Like "mild rhythmic syncopation", "subtle use of vocal harmony", and "minor key tonality".) I gave it one of my favorite songs, and it came up with this awesome radio station. Some of the selections I thought were strange, like when it played another band's cover of the song I originally entered before it ever played the original song. One thing in particular stands out.

I enjoy The Grateful Dead's music, though I didn't plug that band into Pandora when I made the station. One of the first several songs it played was Uncle John's Band, played by the Indigo Girls. "Strange," I thought. "Why play a cover when the original is perfectly fine?" Well, earlier today it played the original version. It is a great book, but having heard them both on Pandora I have to say I like the Indigo Girls version better. Just a little bit. But Pandora was right; if I had to choose between the two of them that's the version that belongs on my personal radio station.

Comments

Gene Nash

on Dec 23, 2005

Sounds cool. Too bad they don't have a lower bandwidth version for us dial-up troglodytes.

Unless someone decided to send me a cable modem for Christmas (as if), I'll have to settle for a Pandora bookmark for now.

Zmrzlina

on Dec 30, 2005

Very interesting, however, the site is not working well with my Safari (Mac OS X) browser. I would like to see what it gives me for music selections similar to Vienna Teng. Perhaps I will try with Firefox later this weekend.

sarradee

on Jan 10, 2006

Thanks for the link! I'm going to enjoy playing with this.

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