Pandora

I'm sorry if this is news to you, but it's pretty new to me, and it's getting pretty big wherever it is I am. It's Pandora, a free online radio that matches your favorite artists to others like them before playing some selected tracks. It apparently derives its algorithm from the Music Genome Project. This is really cool. The Music Genome Project was started in 2000 as an attempt to "capture the essence of music", a daunting task. Where Last.FM and other inferior websites depend on hipster-powered methodology to determine song likeness, Pandora is rooted deeply in MATH. To do what it does, each song is divided into over one hundred elements, called genes, and various songs are matched up to find similar artists and genres. Your average rock song has about 150 genes, the average rap song has over 300, and jazz has over 400. These genes can be something as simple as the gender of the lead singer to something as complex as types of lyrics (Erotic Lyrics, Abstract Lyrics, Heartbreaking Lyrics, and my favorite: Lyrics about Partying). Of course, a computer can't tell the difference between "Fight For Your Right", arguably the greatest Partying-based song ever written, and Celine Dion's decidedly non-Partying related "I Will Always Love You". You'd be right. Which is why a team of musicians analyzes each song that's been through the filter, a process that takes about twenty minutes per song. I guess they've been doing this for the past decade (almost!) and that's why there's so many songs. But I guess here's my question. Are they getting paid for this? We, as the end-users, should be paying for such a service; one that provides uncannily matched music with songs we know that we like. Plus, where's all the red tape that would be required to play music by artists without their say-so? I know for a fact that some of the artists I'm listening to as I'm writing this are not just gonna sign off on their art for nothing. It's a madhouse, a MADHOUSE! Regardless, I'm willing to listen to this stuff for as long as I can.

Oh, and if you're ever down, or feeling a little blue, just YouTube Christian the Lion. Never fails.