All the music you can eat

[giza]

http://www.pandora.com/

This site totally rocks. They have a huge database of songs that have been, well... analyzed. This can be used to group songs of the same type together.

You start off by entering the name of an artist or song. (For example: Rammstein, GWAR, Paul Oakenfold, or Nobuo Uematsu) Pandora then queries their database and plays other songs that have similar attributes to what you entered. You can further fine tune your preferences by telling whether you liked each individual song or not.

And it just works. When I created a station called "Paul Oakenfold", I get lots of trance. When I created "Nobuo Uematsu", I got lots of soft orchestral music, like what I would expect in most of the Final Fantasy games. It's definitely worth a try!

Comments

[shenryyr.livejournal.com]

holy shit that's awesome p.p

[rigelkitty.livejournal.com]

I tried it 6 mos to a year ago and had a lot of trouble finding anything I normally listen to. It kept recommending mainstream music when I wanted indie tracks.

I just tried it again by entering three artists: The Rogue Element, Skeewiff, and Arling & Cameron. It didn't know any of them.

Not good enough.

[shenryyr.livejournal.com]

have you tried using the 'guide us' button?  the idea seems the same as wikipedia, you teach it what it needs to know.

will have to play with this.. lots.

[rigelkitty.livejournal.com]

I used the Guide Us button for dozens of artists they didn't know back when I first tried it. It still doesn't know them today, so either there's no one on the other end of that feature, or they aren't interested.

Plus, if I can't find any music it knows on the initial screen, I never get to the point where I can select the Guide Us button.

[shenryyr.livejournal.com]

well shit that really sucks

this has way too much potential to be improperly run behind the scenes

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

Let me know if you want to share a station sometime.

[giza.livejournal.com]

I noticed that it also doesn't have any music from The Lion King.

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've heard this criticism before. I personally look at Pandora as a way for me to listen to different music than I usually listen to, but which sounds similiar, like a radio playlist I program myself. Even the name of the station implies surprise.

Stumping it with your favorite obscure band isn't the point. Cycling through new songs to find a band you've never heard of is. Pick a seed that's less obscure, and as the play list cycles, start clicking "like it" or "don't like it" to mod the list.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Ditto.

[omnibahumut.livejournal.com]

There are songs that have quite strict licences on them that will make them hard to find anywhere.

Take "Mad World" by Gary Joules for example. Its on the Donnie Darko soundtrack, and only on the soundtrack. Rhapsody doesn't have it on demand, only in its rotation in Alternative Rock, and iTunes makes you buy the whole Album, you can't buy the song alone.
So for some popular songs, it might be a restriction the album company has. If its an indie thing, try writing to the artist and reccommending they get thier tracks on Pandora.

[cuprohastes.livejournal.com]

Opera 9 has a Pandora Widget.

[rigelkitty.livejournal.com]

It can't find stuff that's similar to what I listen to if it can't find the stuff I listen to.

And Skeewiff isn't obscure. They have three albums. Their music is featured in movies, commercials, and videogames.

"Mad World"

[sleepingwolf.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I picked up that on his CD "Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets"...which Amazon seems to have only as an import these days. Funny, I didn't pay import-level prices for it.

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

Must be a licensing thing. Pandora doesn't have the Beatles, either.