As I write this blog, I can hear the strains from the mellow song that my new personal radio station hand-picked for me. When I clicked on the link to the Web 2.0 winners, I immediately clicked on the site for music. The number one site was Pandora, which boasted that it could create a music station attuned to your musical tastes. I was familiar with other sites with online radio stations, like music.yahoo.com which gave you stations based on genres. How pandora tickled my fancy was their initial question when I began to learn about their site. The first step in creating your personal radio station begins with your answer to this question: What is your favorite song/artist/band? Based on your response, a radio station is created that showcases artists and songs that share elements of your favorite song/artist/band. What's great about Pandora is that each of these songs have been analyzed in the Music Genome Project, so when they play on your radio station you can learn why that particular song came up. This analysis of songs distinguishes Pandora from other websites that feature personal music stations that merely categorize them in genres. I like Pandora's capability to identify songs that I may like, with pretty good accuracy and surprising results. They do this by allowing me to choose what songs I like and do not, thereby creating a musical profile that lets them know what type of music I would possibly enjoy. Listening to Pandora provides me with the songs that I know and love, but also opens up my musical knowledge by introducing me to artists that I haven't heard before.
The only downside to Pandora is that you are unable to skip a certain number of songs in an hour, which allows for the unfortunate situation of you stuck listening to a song you really don't like. When this happens, the site suggests that you create a new music station to listen to a new song, which isn't so bad.
Pandora would be great in libraries that provide music CDs for its patrons. Just how we recommend books based on what books our patrons have read in the past, Pandora could provide music recommendations. Another feature of Pandora is its artist search, which provides the artist's biography and selected discography (complete tracks!) for free. Pandora would be a great starting point for research projects on musicians, for its artist search contains the biographies and discographies of Beethoven and The Beatles.
This is truly my new favorite website!
Thursday, March 13, 2008
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