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Reviewed by:
  • Pandora
  • Anne Shelley
Pandora. Pandora Media, supported by the Music Genome Project. http://www.pandora.com/ (Accessed February 2009). [Requires a Web browser, an Internet connection of at least 150 kbps, Adobe Flash Player, a sound card and either speakers or headphones. Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers are supported for Microsoft Windows 2000 or later. Firefox and Safari browsers are supported for Mac OS X, version 10.3 or later.] [End Page 138]

In a crowded market, Pandora has emerged as one of the largest providers of Internet radio. Powered by the massive Music Genome Project, Pandora facilitates exploration of hundreds of composers, singer–songwriters, and musical artists that cover the spectrum from renowned to very obscure. Users are able to create customized radio stations that become more tailored to their musical tastes based on user feedback and on data provided by the Music Genome Project. Beginning with a single song, or “seed,” Pandora uses a complex algorithm—in tandem with a user’s “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” rating—to match that song’s assigned musical attributes with other songs that share all or some of those attributes. The more feedback a user provides and the more a station is played, the more accurate Pandora is in determining what songs should be played on that station. It should be noted that Pandora identifies each separate track on an album as a “song.” So, for the purposes of this review, Puccini’s “Mi chiamano Mimi” from La bohème, the overture to Oklahoma!, movement two of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, and Weezer’s “O Girl-friend” are all examples of songs. I suspect this is an unavoidable consequence of licensing agreements, as well as the indexing approach associated with the Music Genome Project, both of which will be discussed later in this review. Similarly, Pandora refers to each musical contributor in the Music Genome Project as an “artist.”

The taxonomy born of the Music Genome Project is what sets Pandora apart from other Internet radio stations, such as Last.fm ( http://www.last.fm/ ), Slacker ( http://www.slacker.com/ ), and Live365 ( http://www.live365.com ), to name a few. Pandora’s co-founder Tim Westergren created the Music Genome Project in 2000. Starting with an initially meager list of variables, Westergren hired a team of analyst-musicians to listen to music and populate a database with descriptions related to a song’s melody, harmony, rhythm, basic instrumentation, and hundreds of other attributes. He describes these elements as “genes” that compose a sort of musical DNA for each song. Certain parts of each DNA string can link to other songs with similar qualities. The Project’s analysts also identified several broad “Genomes” that Pandora appears to treat as genres. Some examples of these genomes are Rock, Classical, Blues, and Holiday, with subcategories of British Invasion, Choral (Baroque Period), Chicago Blues, and Swingin’ Christmas, respectively. Nolan Gasser, adjunct professor of musicology at Stanford University and chief musicologist for Pandora Media, collaborated with Westergren to better define each genome and expand his list of genes from 400 to over 600 by the time they launched Pandora in 2005. A sampling of these attributes—ranging from “chromatic harmony” and “major key tonality” to “gangsta rap attitude” and “G-funk synth line”—is discussed in Pandora’s FAQ list ( http://blog.pandora.com/faq/ ).

Like many traditional, terrestrial radio stations, Pandora is supported by advertisements, and offers its services to users at no charge. A large number of advertisements are specific to Pandora, yet more and more they seem to appear on behalf of commercial sponsors. Ads are primarily visual, but Pandora has recently added short audio advertisements in-between a certain number of songs. A user with a free account can create up to 100 stations. For an annual fee of $36, Pandora also offers a subscription service in which advertisements are omitted. Subscriptions are available for single users only and include an option to access Pandora using certain brands of home listening devices. A mobile service through which users may access Pandora on cellular phones is also offered, however, this option is currently limited to a small number of providers...

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