MARC'S TECHNOLOGY BLOG - GOT ME AN I-POD . . . THEN FOUND PANDORA!
OPEN PANDORA'S WEBSITE!
I, Marc Milbauer, have, at last, joined the teeming millions having purchased, for pure listening enjoyment, an iPod 8GB Nano.
(OOOOOOO!!!!)
Further, I would like to let it be known that I procured said Nano for the very impressive price of only $157!
(OOOH MY GOSH!!!)
On Ebay, of all places!
(SWEEEET!!!)
I love the thing and am totally addicted. I actually look for excuses to use it. I go on bike rides at midnight just so I can use the thing. I've been blown away at how much music I have that I really love that I didn't even know I own! It's revealed some really great deep tracks that have done no more than gather dust on my hard drive.
By extension of this purchase and subsequent rediscovery of the depths of my music collection I remembered Pandora. Pandora is the radio for the Music Genome Project, a venture started by a group of musicians and music loving technologists who set out discover the essence of music. They listened to literally thousands upon thousands of artists from all over the world and assembled a music genome. Certain attributes make a song unique and provide it's identity. They accounted for everything from harmony to instrumentation, arrangement to tonality of each song. All this was fed into a database and Pandora was born.
As you listen to Pandora, you give each song thumbs up or thumbs down (actually, I tend to only score the songs I really love or those I really hate.) As you go and give Pandora more and more feedback about what you like and dislike, you will start to hear more and more songs with the attributes you really like, and less of the ones with attributes you don't like. Believe it or not - Pandora actually works!
It took me about two and a half weeks of pretty regular listening and "thumbing" approximately 150 songs before I realized that I was enjoying virtually everything it was playing.
I have discovered at least two new bands per week using Pandora. This free website is going to end up costing me hundreds of dollars in downloads this year. I'm curious to know if others get the same results.
Give me a shout and let me know!
Happy browsing!!
DEAN'S TEAM TECH EDITOR,
MARC MILBAUER
