I bet you heard about
Pandora. If you haven’t I bet you will hear about it pretty soon, if you are a music fan who likes discovering new music.
Pandora, which is created by
The Music Genome Project, is in preview stage at this moment and is not open to public. However, I was lucky enough to get an invitation to try out the service before it goes public. Man, do I love about getting my hands on new services before masses. That being said, it was not very hard to get an invitation to
Pandora to my surprise. I just entered my email address on the
Pandora home page on Saturday and I received an invitation email couple of hours ago. Ok, ok enough about that. You want to hear the details, right?
Pandora is a new way to discover new music. You basically communicate with the player. Really. It asks you about a song or artist name that you like, and takes over the job of bringing you music that you will like. I can say it is pretty cool after trying it out for 15 minutes. Interaction with
Pandora player is not limited to the initial song selection. As you are listening to songs, you can click on the song and ask
Pandora why it played that particular song. You may also tell it to never play that song again, or tell it to create a new station from the playing song. You are also promoted to buy the song from iTunes or buy the album CD from
Amazon.
I liked the “Why did you play this song?” question. When I asked this question when listening to a song in my Metallica channel, I received the below response:
Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features hard rock roots, mild rhythmic syncopation, minor key tonality, demanding instrumental part writing and a dirty electric guitar solo.
You gotta love that! I listen to music but I am not a real expert when it comes to describing the music that I listen to. In this sense, I think Pandora will not only help me explore new music, but also discover my taste in more musical terms.
Pandora is in preview mode, and it can definitely improve in some areas. Things that got my attention immediately:
- It is possible to skip songs but it is not possible to come back to that song. Neither is it possible to listen a song you particularly like again.
- When I switch stations it does not remember what was playing when I return to that station. Every click on the station it seems to be recreating the playlist. I don’t know if this is really a bad thing, but it would be nice if the song list could be remembered.
Pandora is listening to the early feedback and their blog is here.
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