HiFi Blog: digital audio goodness

Pandora is an innovative music discovery service that just launched this week, trying to answer the critical question “can you help me discover more music that I’ll like?”. We had a chance to beta test it before it opens its door to the public, and according to our first impressions it gets the job quite done.

In its effort to become your personal DJ it uses the findings of the Music Genome Project. Started 5 years ago by a group of musicians and music-loving technologists, it’s a comprehensive, insane (in a good sense) analysis of music from over 10,000 artists, in which the song’s basic parts (melody, harmony, rhythm, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, vocal harmony, etc.) are examined

Signing-up for Pandora is a breeze (email/password and you’re done), and before you know it, Pandora’s music player is sitting right in front of you. It’s entirely web-based; uses Flash technology.

You type the name of an artist or song that you like and a “station” streaming songs (at a sweet 128kbps bitrate, no less) similar to your input instantly created. You fine-tune the station by giving a thumbs up or down on the tracks played. The “why is this song playing” option explains in musicological terms why Pandora thinks the currently playing track is similar to your input. Unfortunately, due to licensing restrictions, you can’t rewind—you can pause and skip tracks though.

You can create up to 100 unique stations—Pandora’s library contains all kinds of music, over 300,000 songs from more than 10,000 artists. First 10 hours are free, after that $36 gives you a one-year limited subscription, which is a good price-point.

We were left very impressed, and we think music lovers are certain to like Pandora.

Link [pandora.com]
TechCrunch profile [techcrunch.com]
Pandora Media’s CTO blog [blogspot.com]