Wow. Neato!

[usernamenumber]

If you haven't seen pandora.com, you should really check it out. No, seriously. Do it now.

It's part of the "Music Genome Project". You enter the name of an artist or a song and it will build a playlist of other artists with similar qualities. It even explains how how it's quantified the properties of each track. Then, for each one you can say if you like or dislike it and it tweaks the list accordingly.

I've already found a couple of new artists to check out. At one point it was playing one of those They Might Be Giants songs that's got a sort of faux-40s sound to it and, when I said that I liked it, the next song was an old Bob Hope/Margaret Whiting duet ("Blind Date", which is an absolutely adorable song). TMBG to Bob Hope. And it actually made sense. Rocking.

Comments

[tikva.livejournal.com]

Oh, shit, I'm hooked. :)

delayed reaction

[hanashibeta.livejournal.com]

i had seen pandora awhile back & thought it was pretty awesome, but i used up the free trial (experiencing several new-to-me artists and stunning transitions along the way) and wasn't willing to spend money (the ads didn't exist then) for something with some serious usability flaws for me. i really prefer being able to play/pause my music with the keyboard without switching apps; otherwise it interferes too much with my work. now i've got it running full time again with the ads, but the fact that i have to switch to firefox, switch to the right tab, and actually click on the player to be able to pause means i'll probably give up on it again after a couple more days. i hope they eventually release some small controller app or something.