Pandora - Where to Find New Music Part 2
March 16th, 2006
Realizing that AllMusic.com isn’t the only music database online I figured I would turn my Where to Find New Music post into a miniseries of posts about other sites that have similar functionality.
In this installment I’m going to show you a ridiculous web application called Pandora that was created by the Music Genome Project. What is Pandora then? Well think of it as your own personal radio station that only plays music that you like! Wouldn’t that be nice? Well Pandora is the closest anything has come to just that. The advantage to Pandora over a site like AllMusic.com is you get to go by the sound of the music, not just the name of a band or song.
So how does it work?
When you visit Pandora it asks you for the name of an artist or the name of a song. For example I gave it the name Eric Clapton. If Pandora has music from that artist in its database it will start by playing a song from them. After that song is done playing Pandora will pick another artist who has a similar musical, lyrical, and instrumental style to the first artist you chose.
After playing I’m Tore down by Clapton for me, Pandora played a live version of Hotel California by the eagles. For each song Pandora plays you have several options that include:
- Why did you play this song - a list of the qualities the song has which made Pandora choose it
- Make a new station from this song - create a station which will play songs similar to this one
- Buy this song from iTunes - so you can add it to your personal collection
- Buy this album from Amazon - so you can own the album for your personal collection
- I like it - will teach Pandora to play more songs like this one on this station
- I don’t like it - will teach Pandora not to play more songs like this one on this station
- Add to your favorites page - adds the song to a list of your favorite songs for later
Pandora (for its own monetary gain I’m sure) gives you direct access to iTunes and Amazon so you can buy any of the music you like. I think this is a really great feature that any music database should have.
Pandora allows you to create a few stations and play around with it but to be able to get the full experience it’s a good idea to register. If you register you can login from any computer and pull up your stations and favorites lists.
If you don’t know about Pandora you should head over and give it a shot. If anything its fun to play with for a while.
For other sites you can use to find new music check out my other post about AllMusic.com.
tagged music, music database, pandora and radio
Related Posts
- Last.fm - Where to Find New Music Part 3
- Last.fm and Pandora for Your Website
- Allmusic.com - Where to Find New Music
- Getting my Les Paul Setup Part 2
