Matt Van Stone

Don’t you wish you could have your own personal radio station that plays exactly the kind of music you like? Well then check out Pandora. Pandora is an online radio created by the Music Gnome Project which is designed to help you find new artists that play the same type of music you already like.

Pandora references the Music Genome Project database to compare the songs you like with ones with similar genres, instruments, rhythms, lyrical content and many other attributes. This way it is able to make a logical guess at a similar group or song to the ones you like.

On the main page you type in the name of an artist or song you like and Pandora finds other similar artists or songs. The great thing about this is it works like a radio station. You can tell it when you do or don’t like specific songs so it learns what you like best. The great thing though is you are not limited to one station, you can create several stations depending on your mood. You can train one station to play death metal and another to play classic rock.

Pandora usually starts off by playing a song by the artist you choose (if it is in Pandora’s database). The songs after the first one will be ones it deems similar to the artist or song you searched for when creating the station. If available it will show you the album art. If art isn’t available it usually just shows a picture of a stack of CDs.

To help Pandora learn what type of music you like all you have to do is click on the album picture and choose I Like It, or I Don’t Like It. It uses some complex algorithms to help it decide what music it should play for you later. It will also link you directly to iTunes or Amazon.com to purchase the album if you wish.

You can also ask it why it played a certain song for you. When I asked it why it played Comeback Kid on a the station I created for Dark Tranquility it told me “Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features hard rock roots, mild rhythmic syncopation, a vocal-centric aesthetic, minor key tonality and repetitive melodic phrasing.” Going by that you can tell that the creators of Pandora know a lot about music and put a lot of hard work into it.

Head over to Discover Music – Pandora and give it a try. Personally I’m not a huge fan of online radios, but this is a great tool for finding new music that is like the artists I already enjoy listening too!