There are a lot of things I love about Des Moines, but the radio stations are definitely not one of them (I am a bit of a music snob). That’s why I was so happy when I discovered Pandora -thanks Tony.
What is it?
Simple version: A website that you can use to create your own Internet radio station that plays your favorite genre of music.
Complex version: An automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project -- An effort to capture the essence of music at the fundamental level using over 400 attributes or “genes” to describe songs and a complex mathematical algorithm to organize them.
It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.
A given song is represented by a vector containing approximately 150 - 400 genes. Each gene corresponds to a characteristic of the music, for example, melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and even the gender of lead vocalist, level of distortion on the electric guitar, type of background vocals, etc.
Rock and pop songs have 150 genes, rap songs have 350, and jazz songs have approximately 400.
Users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. This morning I entered in five of my favorite bands (Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Sufjan Stevens, Wilco and Mute Math) and I’ve been amazed by the results! (Iron & Wine, M. Ward and even Dire Straits).
I’ve only voted down one song (Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay – I told you I am a music snob).
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