After some strong recommendations from both
John and a co-worker, I decided to check out
Pandora, a new streaming music service. Pandora allows you to create music channels by specifying any combination of artists and songs. Pandora then searches its archives for songs that are structurally or sonically similar to the original music.
For example, I created a Goldfrapp channel. Pandora first played a Goldfrapp song that it thought was typical of Goldfrapp's style ("Lovely Head"), then it played Bjork's "All Is Full Of Love." Pandora said it played "All Is Full Of Love" because it contains "new age influences, a vocal-centric aesthetic, major key tonality, synthetic sonority and a dynamic female vocalist."
And then Pandora played Celine Dion.
Now you do have the ability to guide Pandora by adding songs to an "I Like" and an "I Don't Like" list. Pandora will adjust its playlist by playing more songs that are similar to the songs you like and fewer songs that are similar to the songs that you don't like. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that's entirely helpful.
What is Pandora to make of the fact that I disliked Celine's "The Power of Love"? Did I dislike it because it contained "mild rhythmic syncopation, major key tonality [and] romantic lyrics?" No. I disliked the song because it sucks.
And what am I to make of the consequences of disliking "The Power of Love"? Is it a good thing or a bad thing for me to hear fewer songs that contain "mild rhythmic syncopation, major key tonality [and] romantic lyrics?" Since I have no way of knowing what set of songs I have just disfavored, I really couldn't tell you. There may be a rich collection of songs that have those properties. I simply may have been unfortunate in having Pandora present me with a poor example of that type of song.
Madonna is a good example of the consequences of deciding not to exercise editorial control over the music collection. Pandora has played two Madonna songs so far on the Goldfrapp channel: "Love Profusion" from
American Life and "I Love New York" from
Confessions On A Dance Floor. Unlike Celine Dion, it's easy to think of fans of both artists. My roommate, Mark, is one. However, I think even Mark would agree that "Love Profusion" and "I Love New York" are not the highlights of Madonna's career. If anything, they are two of the weakest songs from two of her weakest records. That said, even though I'm not Madonna's biggest fan (that's
Mark's job), I still agree that (some) Madonna belongs on the Goldfrapp channel.
Maybe I'm being too critical of Pandora. It's not a personalized music service, it's a music discovery service. Part of Pandora's strength is that it refuses to classify music by genre or recording date, which allows it to play songs by Quantic and Johnnny "Guitar" Watson on the same channel.
Pandora works best when you give it free reign to skip through a broad range of music and only occasionally nudge it in one direction or another. Pandora's music library is wide but not very deep. It claims to have over 300,000 songs from 10,000 artists, which is a healthy average of thirty songs per artist. However, I've listened to Pandora enough to suspect that it has a comprehensive collection of very few artists. Many artists appear to be represented primarily (Bjork) or completely (Gino Vanelli) by greatest hits albums. In addition, Pandora does not have a classical music collection, and its world music collection is weak.
I think that whatever frustration I have with Pandora is due to my inability to tell Pandora why I like or dislike a song. For example, on my Quantic channel the songs can be either rootsy electronica (Gotan Project, Mark Farina) or old skool funk, soul or r&b (Ann Peebles, L.T.D.). Pandora was playing a good set of electronica until it played The Crystal Method, which I dislike. I told Pandora that I didn't like "Born Too Slow," and now it's playing Earth, Wind and Fire. Now, I'm just as happy listening to 70s funk as I am to the Gotan Project, but I wish there was I way I could tell Pandora that I simply dislike a particular song rather than an entire style of music. That is, keep the electronica but ditch The Crystal Method.
After one trip to the emergency room and four out of the original gang of seven bailing out early, Kim and Paul and I emerged from the muddy reaches of the Boy Scout camp over four hours after we entered. It was the kind of day where five minutes into the ride one guy slipped on a root, fell over and slid/fell six feet down into a creek. 
