September 06, 2005

Pandora radio. Based on the Music Genome Project, enter something you like and a custom station explores more stuff you'll like, kinda like they can hear the music in your head...
posted by danielo 19 years ago
  • Hee. It's pretty good, I've got a three month subscription to it. The music gets a little bit repetititive after the first couple of days, but there's a good breadth, so just keep adding channels for variety. I've been listening to alot of swing and big band music (Rat Pack, Nat King Cole, etc...), although what I was looking for was Broadway musical songs. But it's all good. And now I know the Project only has 2 songs by John Barrowman, although they have a few more as records only.
  • I was prepared to be skeptical--and I guess I still am--but they did a pretty good job when I used Albert Ayler's "Holy Ghost" as a prompt, but less so when Pharoah Sanders was the cue. Less so still with Amon Duul II. Not that these are the ultimate test of the mapping project, and I think Pandora does a better job of mapping than does Last.fm (Nee audioscrobbler)which relates artists solely on the basis that if I play Pharoah and I play Buddy Holly, then the two must be similar to those with similar tastes as mine. End result: I will have to play with Pandora more and see just what's left in the box, I hope.
  • This seems way cool.
  • Thumbs up... bookmarked and will be used when I get a bit more time. Look forward to playing with it.
  • I fiddled with this when it was posted to MeFi. I was impressed with the way it worked, but ultimately I think Last.fm is more useful to me. This service does a decent job, but the quality seems to vary a bit too wildly. And its emphasis on song structure and the techinical aspects of the music shortchanges other important factors (to me). Last.fm does an okay job for recommendations. But, for me, it's much better at matching up people who have similar musical tastes. I've dug up a lot of new music surfing my neighbors' lists, more than with any other service, easy.
  • Why is last.fm so choppy? At some point during most songs it will pause for a few seconds, as if the server is choked. Any way to increase the cache size, or whatever I need to do?
  • It's probably rebuffering, but I don't know what you do to fix that. I have the same problem with radio broadcasts in iTunes.
  • Looks like I'm late to discover the Pandora radio bandwagon, but I just discovered it today, and I love it. Random music to fit whatever bizarre mood I might be in!