The Enigmatic Amish

Pandora.com

Pandora.com, an online streaming radio website, has recently announced its partnership with several home music system companies to allow users to listen to their Pandora stations without even utilizing a computer. This development marks yet another step in which the internet and the tools that have been created on it are leaving the “internet box” and entering further and further into the real, “brick and mortar” world around us.

I am personally extremely excited by this development. Both because of its place in the above mentioned trend, but also because Pandora is by far and away, in my humble opinion, the best online radio that I have come across, and I make it a point to try out as many as I can find!

The main selling point of internet radio is its supposed ability to customize the music a listener hears to the listener’s particular tastes. However, it is nearly impossible to require a listener to input every song or band that they would want to hear, with the addition that such a plan would lose even old school radio’s ability to introduce a listener to new music.

Instead, Pandora utilizes a very simple interface that is extremely intuitive to learn and control, to create an extremely enjoyable and unique musical experience. Upon entering the site the user is prompted to enter a song or artist which they wish to hear music by and similar to. However, rather than rely on an algorithmic approach to connect that user to music similar to their input Pandora has developed a panel of musicians, producers, and general music experts to connect into what it calls the “Music Genome Project.” Using standard terms such as: minor tonality, syncopation, etc the project tags songs and musicians describing aspects of their music. The station will then connect similar tags to create a musical experience that will connect the user to music that is actually similar to their input as opposed to the usual jumble that at least I have experienced.

To further improve the listening experience as each song is play the user has the ability to give the song a thumbs up or down, indicating whether or not they agree that the song should be played on that station. Given consistent input Pandora is able to create a musical experience that actually places similar music and becomes an extremely useful tool for finding new music. For instance, in the time it has taken me to write the above while listening to Pandora it has played two new bands which I have never heard and would like to check out as well as three of my favorite songs, all on a station for which I simply inputted the band “Fuel.”

Pandora’s simplicity and sophistication has definitely made it one of favorite web tools and a definite thumbs up. At the cost of becoming sappy I have to say that although I do not currently have any of the new music systems which Pandora has partnered with but I cannot wait to get them and so further my Pandora experience.

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