DJ Urban Kobbb requests a Pandora station built around Joe Jackson’s One More Time (playing now). Hit the  button to hear Pandora’s suggested add, This is Not America, by David Bowie. |
iList Paducah reader, let’s call him K-Fiddy — suggests that we open Pandora, found at pandora.com.
Pandora is the brainchild of the Music Genome Project (MGP). MGP’s idea is that music can be broken down into hundreds of attributes, or “genes.” By analyzing the genetics of the music that Pandora members like, it can suggest other music with similar attributes.
You start Pandora by entering a song or artist that you like. Pandora, then, creates a “station” of music based on your original choice.
OK, so which artist should I choose to start my station?
Joe Jackson has been on my mind a lot lately. This might be because he is set to release Rain, his first album since 2003. Or maybe it’s because his 1979 hit, One More Time, is now used to sell the Taco Bell Cheesy Gordita Crunch.
However he got there, I enter Joe Jackson, and Pandora starts a station and begins scanning almost 100 years of popular recordings to find songs with similar musical qualities to Joe Jackson.
First song up: King of Pain by The Police. Do they think that I only want ’80s music? Why does Pandora think that I will like this?
Well, if you click on the song, you can see the attributes of King of Pain that match up with Joe Jackson music. Pandora says that both…
- Use basic rock song structure
- Have mild rhythmic syncopation
- Are sung by a breathy male lead vocalist
- Employ subtle use of acoustic piano
The second song that Pandora suggests is Breaking Us in Two by Joe Jackson. Duuhh, it’s a Joe Jackson station.
Third song: Somewhere Only We Know by Keane. OK, current music. Nice.
Fourth song: This is Not America by David Bowie. I like this song and, quite frankly, I’d forgotten about it. I think that I might want to own it, so I click on its link and buy it from iTunes. I also could have purchased a copy through the same link from amazon.com. I can also create a new station based on this song.
So, my first Pandora effort is pretty successful — I found some music that I had forgotten about. But what about finding new music that I haven’t heard?
I’ll challenge Pandora and plug in a lesser-known band. Nouvelle Vague remakes new wave and punk classics in a down-tempo and bossa nova style. Let’s start a Nouvelle Vague station.
Through Nouvelle Vague, Pandora leads me to Sam Phillips, Club 8 and Erin McKeown. All are down-tempo artists, and the latter two are not in my current collection. I’d have to call this station a success.
Since Pandora tries to use objective measures to recommend something as subjective as musical taste, it’s bound to fail from time to time. That’s OK. In a short period of time it reminded me of some lost music and introduced me to some pretty interesting new music.
That’s not bad for 30 minutes on a Web site.
