Open the box!
So, smittyhalibut raved about a music site called Pandora. Originally, I had thought it was a way to find and download music similar to what you already had/liked.
Not quite. It is, essentially, the best damn streaming radio station you ever heard. Because you get to directly influence what gets played and what doesn't. Not control--you can't actually ask it to play a particular song on demand--but influence.
You start by "seeding" a station with a song or artist. If it's an artist, a song by that artist is played and it asks you if that's what you wanted. If it's a particular song, it chooses one that's similar and asks you if it's similar enough to the song you wanted. If so, then it starts playing other songs, by that artist and others, that are "similar" based on the Musical Genome Project.
And MAN is it good. There are literally hundreds of qualities to every single song that it uses to refine and select songs for your new station. When you tell it that you like or dislike a particular song, it adds that info into what you want/don't want. After minimal training, my first station was almost exclusively playing songs I enjoyed, especially songs by groups I'd never heard of. And that seems like the point. For the first time in MANY years, I'm actually thinking of buying new (to me) music.
The first station was so successful that I'm starting a new one. Already, I've found that bands I knew of had at least some songs that were so different from what I knew of them that I might have to take a closer look at them. I've also found some recent bands that have a similar sound that I'd never have known about, otherwise.
No, I'm not getting paid by them; I just think the idea of a customizable streaming radio station is (for me), almost like a holy grail of musical experiences. I get to chose the genre, I get to say "no, this sucks; don't play stuff like this anymore" and it can tell (after at least a little while) what about that you didn't like so it doesn't weed things out unnecessarily. And after I get a few of these stations going, it looks like I can "shuffle" through them so I can get a kind of "superset" of "songs I like."
Not quite. It is, essentially, the best damn streaming radio station you ever heard. Because you get to directly influence what gets played and what doesn't. Not control--you can't actually ask it to play a particular song on demand--but influence.
You start by "seeding" a station with a song or artist. If it's an artist, a song by that artist is played and it asks you if that's what you wanted. If it's a particular song, it chooses one that's similar and asks you if it's similar enough to the song you wanted. If so, then it starts playing other songs, by that artist and others, that are "similar" based on the Musical Genome Project.
And MAN is it good. There are literally hundreds of qualities to every single song that it uses to refine and select songs for your new station. When you tell it that you like or dislike a particular song, it adds that info into what you want/don't want. After minimal training, my first station was almost exclusively playing songs I enjoyed, especially songs by groups I'd never heard of. And that seems like the point. For the first time in MANY years, I'm actually thinking of buying new (to me) music.
The first station was so successful that I'm starting a new one. Already, I've found that bands I knew of had at least some songs that were so different from what I knew of them that I might have to take a closer look at them. I've also found some recent bands that have a similar sound that I'd never have known about, otherwise.
No, I'm not getting paid by them; I just think the idea of a customizable streaming radio station is (for me), almost like a holy grail of musical experiences. I get to chose the genre, I get to say "no, this sucks; don't play stuff like this anymore" and it can tell (after at least a little while) what about that you didn't like so it doesn't weed things out unnecessarily. And after I get a few of these stations going, it looks like I can "shuffle" through them so I can get a kind of "superset" of "songs I like."