Internet music radio

**Nano** · February 3rd, 2006, 11:23 AM

Just found this article on RollingStone.com about how some Internet stations suggest new music to its listeners.

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Internet Leads Custom Radio
Sites give listeners playlists based on their musical taste patterns

At night, Steve Hogan works as a professional pianist playing gigs around the Bay Area. But since 2000, he's spent his days in an Oakland office building, where he -- and thirty-five other hired ears -- get paid fifteen dollars an hour to listen to music. Spending twenty minutes with each song, they decide whether the vocals are "nasal" or "gritty," the harmony "chromatic" or "diatonic," the drums "tight" or "booming" -- gauging up to 400 components that make up its essence.
Six years of lab-level research like this went into Pandora.com, a Web site that creates individualized radio stations for visitors -- based on as little as one favorite song -- using a complex algorithm that finds patterns in the music you like. So if you type in, say, the Rolling Stones' "Tumbling Dice," Pandora might play "L.A. Connection," by Rainbow, because, as the site explains, the songs share "minor-key tonality." The Faces' "Had Me a Real Good Time" comes up next because of its "vocal-centric aesthetic" -- whatever that is. Listeners can give each song a "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down," helping Pandora better understand their tastes.

"It's ridiculously academic," admits Tim Westergren, a musician and co-founder of the Music Genome Project, the group behind Pandora. "But the premise is to figure out what you like about music and give you more." (Some users notice that the suggestions can be wacky -- like playing Metallica for an Indigo Girls fan.)

Internet radio in general is booming: According to Arbitron, Yahoo! Music attracts more listeners than the biggest terrestrial stations. News of Pandora, which is free, spread quickly after its November launch, as it was championed by bloggers, including Moby. In less than two months, it attracted 2 million visitors. And according to Pandora, ten percent of users click on links to buy music on Amazon and iTunes.

"The origin for the genome was to find a way for musicians to more effectively find their audience," says Westergren. In 2000, with money from a few institutional and private investors, Westergren and Stanford-trained musicologist Nolan Gasser began training a team of musicians to identify minute details about popular songs. In 2003, as the operation grew, one of the music analysts, Michael Zapruder, was promoted to talent scout. "I buy all the major-label stuff, all the Billboard 200, the CMJ charts, everything on Discord, Parasol -- all the indie labels I like," says Zapruder, who also scours local record stores and online retailers. He adds about 1,500 CDs a month to the database, which currently contains 400,000 songs.

Although it is still a work in progress, Pandora, along with Web sites like Last.fm and MusicStrand, is expanding the possibilities of Internet radio. "In the future, you're not going to have to trade flexibility for control," says Rob Malda, editor of technology blog Slashdot, whose posts about Pandora helped spur the site's growth. "It begs the question, 'What's the point of having regular radio anymore?'"

Four of the best:

Last.fm

Once installed, Last.fm's software tracks every song you play and creates a music profile, which it cross-references with other users' to recommend songs for a personalized radio station. Unlike Pandora's oddball selections, Last's tend to be more obvious: Like the Smiths? Try Belle and Sebastian.

Musicstrands.com

Visitors can find new music through the site's statistical analysis of users' tastes or through the descriptive "tags" that users attach to their playlists -- anything from "punk" to "breakup music," allowing users to share music based on moods. Plus, it has a social networking component, like MySpace.

Webjay.org

In addition to streaming, Webjay -- which Yahoo! recently bought for $25 million -- directs users to sites where files are available for download, legally or not. The site posts a note exhorting users to respect copyrights, but it's as wide-open as early Napster.

Yahoo! Launchcast (Music.yahoo.com/launchcast)

The top Internet radio outlet offers a customizable station with a sleek interface that's as easy to use as Pandora. Users indicate their favorite genres and artists, and Yahoo! generates an instant streaming station featuring all the selected acts and a few obvious fellow travelers -- which is great when you want to hear the hits.

EVAN SERPICK

Posted Jan 30, 2006 12:00 AM

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Anybody tried these? What about disco stations?

**QUINNY** · February 3rd, 2006, 11:45 AM

Yuck!!! I can't think of anything worse than this and you can bet your bottom dollar that there are radio stations already using this type of research and its findings. Just look at how bland and piss poor most commercial radio stations already are. All the hits, all the time.

Why have we all become so damned selfish in our listening habits and unable to be independant thinkers, all of a sudden? Because of geeks like these and their bleedin' algorhythms.

Initially it may throw up surprise choices, but as the very raison d'etre of this is based on similarities, how long before all the choices are safe?

One further point. You have to know what you don't like in order to form an opinion of what you like and make those that you do like sound even sweeter, don't you?

**eddie** · February 4th, 2006, 12:23 AM

I have mixed opinons about some of this.
I recently bought a ton of stuff on Amazon based on what other people bought and recommeded.
I've remembered some really rare artists that i had forgotten about from the 80s. Just this past month, I finally remembered the artist that covered "Joy and Pain" using this method. It was Donna Allen. I bought both of her domestic sets on CD and learned she was a former cheerleader for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
It's mostly inaccurate for analyists saying one song sounds like another or if you like this, you should like that. I think monitoring purchases like what Amazon does answers what people are listening too. It also brings obscurities like Donna Allen, Ann G, D'Atra Hicks, Rhythm Makers, ect. out of the woodwork. The best songs by second tier artists deserve play also.