Pandora the Genome Project

Once again I feel like the last person in the world to be hip to something great. If you don't know already (and you probably do, but I'll keep writing anyway) the Genome project is a team of musicians who listen to songs and break them down to their musical DNA. In their words - On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever. They have apparently listened to over 10 000 artists.

Joined at the hip is pandora.com. On this site they have a streaming music player that you type a band or song into the search line and they decide what other bands and songs complement what you've selected. So, if you set up a station for the Beatles they will tell you what's distinctive about the voice, instrumentation and the way in which their music is played.

Here what I got when I punched in The Beatles...

we chose this track because it features a subtle use of vocal harmony, acoustic rhythm piano, major key tonality, a dynamic male vocalist and melodic song writing.

Funny thing is they played the Kinks and Todd Rungren before they played the Beatles because of some screwy licensing deal. I think that's fine though because if you like the Beatles it's pretty easy to download Beatles songs. The great thing is if you are sick to death of the Beatles but you want something that sounds like them, then you're all set.

You can get more advanced by adding more bands or songs to your radio station. For example I set up a station for Camera Obscura and then I added Cat Power, Neko Case and Belle and Sebastian. Unfortunately for that station those aforementioned bands are probably the best of that sound so every other song I heard was kind of a way to slick or sub-standard version of those bands but hey I'll give it time. Another great feature is that you can rate the songs with a thumbs up or thumbs down. Apparently, if you give the shitty songs a thumbs down you'll get better songs and essentially fine tune your station to where you want it.

The thing I like about this service the most is it frees me from Pitchforkmedia.com, which I usually go to to learn about new music. I like their site but I don't always agree with people-in-their-twenties-who-know-nothing-of-music-history making all my musical choices. Don't get me wrong, Pitchfork is great but it's a popularity contest. Pandora is far more democratic and based on merit not nepotism. Just because a band is unknown or not on a cool label doesn't mean they can't be amazing. So, thank you Pandora for this.

Sometimes it's OK to be last to discover something.

These are the stations I've set up...
The Jazz Butcher
The Minutemen (I just saw their great Doc "We Jam Econo" so I want to hear more stuff like them)
The Velvet Underground
Black Mountain
Ladyhawk
Camera Obscura
Boards of Canada
Yo La Tengo