dj robot

I just found out about a music website that makes some interesting implications about the future of radio. You type in an artist or song you like, and it plays music that it thinks you might like. And then you rate what it plays for you, and it adjusts to your musical taste. So it's sort of like having your own personal disc jockey. It's free, although you need to sign up for an account to hear an unlimited number of songs.

http://www.pandora.com

"The Music Genome is a detailed analysis of a century of popular music. We employee a large team of professional musicians who spend their days listening to music one song at a time and "analyzing" the detailed musical characteristics of the song. This includes obvious stuff like tempo and key, but more importantly it covers a lot of subtle nuance: how much tremolo in the voice, what kid of harmony, guitar picking style, how much cowbell, etc. In total we listen for hundreds of different qualities and painstakingly record the results for each some. After 5 years, we've built up an incredible asset that allows us predict music you will like based on simple input (for example, the name of an album, artist, or song that you love)."

(thanks Maureen Jackson for the link!)