Emerging Technologies - Pandora

In January 2000, a team, led by Tim Westergren began working on an online music radio station that is known today as “Pandora.” Within the next decade the Pandora Radio would change the music industry as we know it. But to some, the Pandora better suits the negative connotation, based on the Greek myth, Pandora’s Box, in which Pandora opened a box unleashing evils into existence. Based on The Music Genome Project which features over 400 traits, Pandora Radio works to create a personalized radio station while incorporating personal preferences from each consumer’s musical taste with a library of over 800,000 songs, carefully analyzed by a team of musicologists.

Ironically, Pandora’s Box, taken from Greek mythology, was a box that contained all that was evil and corrupt in the world. In the music industry, Pandora’s “music box” means the crumbling of live performance and restriction of musical horizons. By listening to music online or on a mobile phone, radio listeners lose the face to face experience that comes with sharing a song. Listening to music suddenly becomes a solo activity. Since the radio is all digital, recorded music, with no video to watch of a performance, the listener is strictly that; a listener, who no longer can connect with the performer or share a bond with a fellow audience member at the same live show.

A listener of Pandora will not be able to get the full effect of a Broadway show just by listening to the soundtrack. There is no face to compliment the melodious voices one may hear. The voice is just a sound, not a character. There is no show to see, no flashing lights, no smoke or other stage effects. Thus, though Pandora’s Box was supposed to be able to carry everything, it is actually quite restricted. And it is additionally constricted by the Music Genome Project. The project groups songs into only four genres: pop, jazz, rap/hip-hop/electronica and world. Yet, this “world” music is only available to the citizens with IP addresses in United States. To limit it even more, the music played on Pandora is only that of which has been made available after having been analyzed by musicologists.

But the player does have its redeeming qualities. Pandora’s development was executed carefully by Westergren and his team’s Music Genome Project. The project “is based on an intricate analysis by actual humans of the music of 10,000 artists from the past 100 years. The analysis of new music continues every day since Pandora's online launch in August 2005” (HowStuffWorks.) The goal of the project is to determine the characteristics each song has, based on a group of 20-30 musicologists’ breakdown, by considering traits like arrangement, beat, form, harmony, orchestration, syncopation, etc. Pandora Radio allows listeners to play specific types of music with refined searches based on feedback collected from each customer’s “I like it” and “I don’t like it” choices. In addition, the player chooses songs from similar artists, allowing listeners to expand their music library based on the sole audience member’s needs, rather than referencing “other listeners bought” like iTunes and Amazon.

It is also extremely convenient. The service is free, and runs on a simple flash player so there is no need to download or install any programming, provided a few ads will pop up every once in a while. But otherwise, the player is subscription-free and portable. Listeners can download applications for the radio to put on their phones and in their cars. This on-the-go method allows for music to travel faster, being shared at a much quicker rate than if we had not gone digital. The player also allows for the option of following friends’ music feeds. This way, one listener can share a song that he/she enjoys and it will be recommended in his/her friend’s feed.

For each song, the Music Genome includes the name of and lyrics to the song, followed by album and the musician/artist’s background, making it easy for listeners to look up or purchase a selection they enjoy. When a song has finished playing, the player chooses a song from a similar artist based on the traits and a rating collected by the genome project and plays it as a follow up to the previous selection.

Pandora Radio’s music options are limited now, but the expansion of the Genome Project is growing rapidly. Instead of sharing music on a face to face level, it allows user to expand and share music his or her musical preferences digitally. The ultimate goal is not to unify everyone into listening to the same type of music, but to allow a listener to increase and share his or her music library without necessarily having to use recommendations from other. Though it is difficult to “experience” new music, using Pandora is definitely new experience.

Sources:

"HowStuffWorks "Musical Traits"" HowStuffWorks "Computer" How Stuff Works. Web. 28 Jan. 2012. <http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/pandora1.htm>.

Pandora Media, Inc. "About The Music Genome Project." Pandora Radio - Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music. Pandora Media, Inc. Web. 30 Jan. 2012.

<http://www.pandora.com/corporate/mgp>.

"Pandora Radio." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 28 Jan. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_Radio>.

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