Pandora
This is not one of my usual updates. It's just something I felt like I wanted to talk about and I figured it was too big for a regular Facebook status update.
I'm actually not sure when I first heard of and created my account on Pandora. Apparently I didn't do much with it so probably it was early on and they didn't have anything I was interested in yet (or I just didn't get it). the first time I really started playing with it was when Facebook changed their security to allow sharing of profile information with other sites. I made a point of turning off profile sharing with the sites they listed, including Pandora. But then I realized that they used FB info so I could see what stations my FB friends had created, so I turned it back on.
Then I created my first station. I started adding a few things I liked to it, with a lot of variety: Celtic music, classic hits, folk music. I liked the way I'd get 4 or 5 songs of one general type, then 4 or 5 of another. Then yesterday, I decided to get a little more advanced. I created different stations for the different general categories: Celtic, Pop Classics, American Folk, Classical (made that today actually). I kept adding artists and songs to each, while indicating my likes and dislikes. If I want to listen to a combination of two or more or the stations I have made, I can create a Quicklist that combines them.
Then today, I thought about the group, "They Might Be Giants." I couldn't figure out which category to put them into. I just couldn't bring myself to lump them in with Pop Classics. So I decided to make a station seeded only with that one group, and I've been listening to it for the last two hours. It's pretty cool. I get some Talking Heads and a few other things I recognize, and a few things I haven't liked (including a few TMBG songs actually), but then I also get Ben Folds and Jonathon Coulton, who I've never heard of before but now discover I really like! (Coulton's cover of "Baby Got Back" is both hilarious and pretty.)
Most people's musical taste, I think, tends to be stuck to some extent in what they listened to in high school or college. This is mostly true for me. I tend to like music from the late 70s and from 83/84 (when I was in England), and a few other types introduced to me by friends later on (Celtic--Jill Mazer in college; Welsh--Dave Librik in the late 90s; TMBG--Marc Kriguer and Janet Lafler in the late 90s).
The nice thing about Pandora is that you are not limited to the CDs and tapes you bought years ago because when you seed a station with an artist or song, it uses the Music Genome Project to find other songs or pieces you might like. Each song hundreds of features (e.g., a subtle use of vocal harmony, major key tonality, a prominent harpsichord part, etc.) and whenever you indicate that you like a song by using it as a seed or by clicking "thumbs up" on its tile in the station display, it finds other songs with similar features. (One thing I'd really like to see is a list of the features I tend to be attracted to, just out of curiosity.) So even those of us who have tended to be stuck on certain songs or genres that we already know can get to hear new stuff that we might discover that we like.
You can use Pandora totally free (which I do) with very few limitations. Upgrading to a subscription gives you better sound quality, unlimited listening time (you get 40 hours per month for free) and unlimited "skips" (you can only skip a certain number of songs each hour for free). I have yet to use Pandora enough to feel a need to subscribe.
I know all of this sounds like an ad, but I swear, I am not being compensated in any way for this "review." I was just feeling so psyched about the new stuff I was hearing.
I'm actually not sure when I first heard of and created my account on Pandora. Apparently I didn't do much with it so probably it was early on and they didn't have anything I was interested in yet (or I just didn't get it). the first time I really started playing with it was when Facebook changed their security to allow sharing of profile information with other sites. I made a point of turning off profile sharing with the sites they listed, including Pandora. But then I realized that they used FB info so I could see what stations my FB friends had created, so I turned it back on.
Then I created my first station. I started adding a few things I liked to it, with a lot of variety: Celtic music, classic hits, folk music. I liked the way I'd get 4 or 5 songs of one general type, then 4 or 5 of another. Then yesterday, I decided to get a little more advanced. I created different stations for the different general categories: Celtic, Pop Classics, American Folk, Classical (made that today actually). I kept adding artists and songs to each, while indicating my likes and dislikes. If I want to listen to a combination of two or more or the stations I have made, I can create a Quicklist that combines them.
Then today, I thought about the group, "They Might Be Giants." I couldn't figure out which category to put them into. I just couldn't bring myself to lump them in with Pop Classics. So I decided to make a station seeded only with that one group, and I've been listening to it for the last two hours. It's pretty cool. I get some Talking Heads and a few other things I recognize, and a few things I haven't liked (including a few TMBG songs actually), but then I also get Ben Folds and Jonathon Coulton, who I've never heard of before but now discover I really like! (Coulton's cover of "Baby Got Back" is both hilarious and pretty.)
Most people's musical taste, I think, tends to be stuck to some extent in what they listened to in high school or college. This is mostly true for me. I tend to like music from the late 70s and from 83/84 (when I was in England), and a few other types introduced to me by friends later on (Celtic--Jill Mazer in college; Welsh--Dave Librik in the late 90s; TMBG--Marc Kriguer and Janet Lafler in the late 90s).
The nice thing about Pandora is that you are not limited to the CDs and tapes you bought years ago because when you seed a station with an artist or song, it uses the Music Genome Project to find other songs or pieces you might like. Each song hundreds of features (e.g., a subtle use of vocal harmony, major key tonality, a prominent harpsichord part, etc.) and whenever you indicate that you like a song by using it as a seed or by clicking "thumbs up" on its tile in the station display, it finds other songs with similar features. (One thing I'd really like to see is a list of the features I tend to be attracted to, just out of curiosity.) So even those of us who have tended to be stuck on certain songs or genres that we already know can get to hear new stuff that we might discover that we like.
You can use Pandora totally free (which I do) with very few limitations. Upgrading to a subscription gives you better sound quality, unlimited listening time (you get 40 hours per month for free) and unlimited "skips" (you can only skip a certain number of songs each hour for free). I have yet to use Pandora enough to feel a need to subscribe.
I know all of this sounds like an ad, but I swear, I am not being compensated in any way for this "review." I was just feeling so psyched about the new stuff I was hearing.