children - get a life!! this is YOUR frankenstein. you have created it. if it's too purple or too dissonant or too ginger or too maryanne it's because YOU made it so. please, like lucia says, use the tools available to you to throw your own pot. me - i feel like rumplestiltsken, sitting here spinning a rabbitt into gold. (sorry, that was HAIR, not HARE, wasn't it). i'm happy as a clam listening to my monastery music hall on pandora. i've gone from 'les paul' to 'sun ra' to 'one ring zero' to 'mississippi john hurt' without even breaking a sweat. oh, lucia, i weep for our future.

HA HA HA!
Sooo funny.
So many great metaphors in that comment, John!
Rabbits into gold, oh man. Too funny.

How about "my station is too unwieldy for the interface"?

I like having a big, hacked-up station, but it would be nice to just get a big list of songs in the station and thumbs up/down them en masse, rather than trying to do it real-time, since I'm usually trying to do six other things while listening. Essentially like the edit function that's aready there, but for the unrated songs.

Hi, i just discovered Pandora, and .... it's flippin awesome!! thanks thanks thanks for making it... music to my ears!! haha

peace :D

I wonder how many users don't use the station tuning-tools because they are mysterious.

By mysterious I mean whether they work (a) at all, (b) whether they work at the station level or the user level (my big question) and (c) how one can review what they have done and remedy it.

By remedy I mean see what impact their tuning has had. For example, if a thumbs up is given to xyz artist what music did that introduce into my station.

Clearly it would help users experiment (i.e., use the system) if they better understood what effect was caused by an action.

Right now there's a disconnect. Don't get me wrong, I quite like what you folks are doing, I just think you could make your job a lot easier if you focused on how people use, or don't, use the features.

Good luck.

r

I'm not above believing that my problems with Pandora are simply user error, but there are a few things worth noting: I expressed a desire for some sort of guide on how I should rate songs way back in November, but this is the most that has come along so far. Since November I've tried everything I could think of, creating the same stations over and over again simply to apply different rules with respect to what feedback I give, but with virtually the same song selection regardless. In fact, I've even tried giving feedback that's exactly the opposite of my opinion and even that seems to result in a similar quality of song selection. Different songs play, but the ratio of the ones I like to the ones that I don't like remains the same.

However, perhaps the most important thing to note about what you've said is this: My problem isn't that my stations play too much variety or that they play too little variety, the problem is that they do both. My stations play a wide variety of exactly what I don't like and little variety of what I do like. I find myself wishing Pandora would play less variety so that I don't have to hear these uninteresting songs all the time, but at the same time, I wish it would play more variety so that I can hear something besides these uninteresting songs all the time. Two different complaints, exactly the same problem.

Over the last six months I've found over a hundred songs on Pandora that I like. They're all similar in different ways, but creating a station and getting Pandora to play more than a dozen of them via feedback alone is impossible. It'll easily go from playing an upbeat fast tempo Jump5 song with punk and disco influences to playing a slow depressing song with plain rock instrumentation and a plain rock sound, but getting it to play that other upbeat fast tempo Jump5 song with punk and disco influences is nearly impossible. What's worse, I can thumb down a dozen of those slow depressing songs in a row and still get to listen to a dozen more of them.

I think what's going on here is that people who aren't as picky about the music they like are natrually loving Pandora since they'd be happy listening to almost anything. So here's a test for everyone who loves Pandora's song selection: Create a station and rate all songs exactly the opposite of how you currently rate them. If Pandora begins playing only music that you totally dislike, then it is working correctly. If Pandora contines to play music that you like then it is obviously broken.

I haven't the time to go into infinite detail as I need to go to bed, but if you're still not convinced something is wrong, create a "Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride" station and listen to it for a while, and when you finally hear "Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride" try to figure out how it fits into the station. It's somewhat of a mystery. The song's Genome data is correct; what I see when I click "why did you play this song" is what I like about the song, but the song selections are simply 90% wrong and no amount of feedback seems to correct it, many of them don't even mention one of the same things in "why did you play this song," the sole exception being "punk influences" which I see a lot but which I disagree with. I believe Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride only has subtle punk influences. Many people would probably insist it's as far from punk as a song could be, but something I can't put my finger on definately sounds like punk to me.

So, anyway, I don't doubt it works well for many people. I just don't believe that the rest of us simply don't know what we're doing. If anything I'd say it's because there's thousands of good punk songs if you like punk songs, but only a few Jump5 songs if you like Jump5 songs. It's easier to find songs that someone likes when a larger percentage of the songs that you have are songs that they like.

I'm not saying that Pandora should know what I like from just one song input, but that it only knows what others like from one song input due to simple luck of them liking what Pandora pays most attention to. Something is wrong with the song selection when I can give feedback on 250 songs and I still don't have better song selection than when I first created the station. (In fact, if you try this, it gets far worse until you get to your 200th song or so.)

It's http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh26000414 if you don't believe me. Look at the 30 songs that have been thumbed up and tell me they aren't completely different from the 220 I thumbed down.

I really do need to go to sleep, so I'm sorry if this doesn't make as much sense as it could.

Hello, Lucia here.

I certainly never meant to imply that any bad stations are the fault of the user. That's definitely not the case! I figured my musings on what I've learned about using the Pandora feedback system might be helpful to others, as it has been in private emails. There's information on the tuning of stations in our FAQ, but I thought I'd flesh it out a little, as it's something I spend a lot of time thinking about!

We know there's lots of things to work on to make Pandora better, and we are working on them all the time. Your feedback helps us, and we are grateful for that; we take listener feedback very seriously.

** Robert:
All feedback is station-specific only.

You can review and/or edit your station by going to the 'Edit this station' option for any station you built. (under the triangle next to your station name in the left menu) Clicking 'remove' next to one of these will set the feedback for it back to neutral. It's not mapped out how exactly each piece of feedback affects your station, but that's a good suggestion.

** Richard:
I'm sorry that your stations aren't turning out how you want them to! That's very frustrating, and I salute you for continuing to work on them. In the morning I'll look into your station(s) and confer with my colleagues, and we'll see if we can't work with you to mold a station that won't hurt your ears. :) We'll get back to you here in the comments, or via email.

The "repeated over a few days of listening" comment seemed interesting to me. Because I've found songs would repeat in a few hours generally.

Is it possible to play our favorites a lil bit more often?

Hi!
I like your radio and listen to it often.
My only comment so far is: I would prefer if you give more variety of choice to rate the song played than I like it or not. Some of them I wouldnt say directly I dont like it, they are pleasent, but I dont like them as much as the ones I mark I like it. Actually the ones I mark with I like in reality I love and really would like them to be played more often. An 5 leveled rating would be more appropriate.
A question: Is there any way to request particular songs. If not, are you thinking of making it possible?

Yours faithfully,
Szilvia

I'm sorry, I should have noticed that what I wrote was somewhat confrontational and edited it before I posted it, but I was in serious need of sleep. I guess I should have just waited until today to reply.

Continuing... I know is that I've heard "Mirage" by Meat Puppets (to name just one song) countless times on many stations, but I can't hear even the slightest similarity between that song and any other song that I like. I frequently try to create stations and only give feedback for the songs that I most like and dislike, as I learned early on that less feedback is better, but eventually I tire of hearing songs like Mirage and so I being thumbing them down when they play and after a dozen or so the song selection stops playing any songs that I like. So I try thumbing up some other songs that I do like, but then the station goes off in other directions I don't want it to. In particular, thumbing up anything with punk influences brings in songs with a lot more punk than a mere influence, but I really don't like punk unless it has disco influences or danceable grooves or something of that sort as well. Anything I say I like will make Pandora play stuff that I don't like, and anything I say I don't like will make Pandora stop playing stuff that I do like. So any feedback at all just worsens song selection.

I don't know if you all have time to figure out why it isn't working for me, but if you're going to, there's another station on which I've thumbed up nearly every song I've ever heard Pandora play that I've liked:

http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh24024413

There's also a list of my favorite songs along with some text about why I like each of them on my web site.

How exactly does pandora work? Is that a trade secret or something? I've been wondering this for quite awhile.

Does pandora just add and subtract attributes when you thumbs up and thumbs down a song or is there a more complicated alogrtihim envoloved? I know that all pandora songs are just mp3 files that pandora downloads as your lessning to a song (a nice feature for slow connnections :) ).

Thank You pandora staff.

Maybe the "zzz" thing would work better for Mirage, then you won't be vetoing other similar songs, just that particular one. What think the Pandora gurus?

Is anyone else having problems connecting to Pandora? I've had problems both today and yesterday. www.pandora.com has been unreachable for hours.

Sometimes, I click thumbs up and realise that I want to go back and undo the thumbs up because I don't like the new direction of the station. Now, let's say that the station isn't new, and I've got a bunch of 'thumbs up' songs. Let's say I forget the name of the song and when I exactly thumbed it up, I can't really remove the song right off. A preview of the song would be nice.

I think I know what you mean, TehOne... maybe if on the "songs you liked" and "songs you didn't like" tabs of "edit station" if it had a hyperlink to the song and artist, like the one that's available on the name of a recently played or currently playing song.

Hi peeps, Lucia again. Some of you I've emailed individually, but here's a few more answers:

- Yes, the (patented!) workings of the Genome and the playlist generator are trade secrets. :) But we do hope to give you more control over your playlists in the future. (ie WHY don't you like this song...)

- Yes, putting a song to sleep for a month (under Guide Us) is a nice alternative that won't affect your station in any other way.

- No, we aren't aware of any Pandora Performance Problems today.

- Nice idea, on the song clips-while-editing idea. For now, you can only hear song clips from the favorites page and from the song info pages.

cheers! Lucia

re: repeats

I noticed that when I created stations with specific songs in mind, I had lots of great variety and few "repeats" and when I created stations with an artist in mind, I did get a few of their tracks from their other releases but still haven't had enough "repeats" to be such an issue on any of the stations I have created. So far it works wonderfully for me. I vary up my searches too, so that I get more variety overall. I do plan on submitting my entire music roster to Pandora when I get all the recordings from my artists together. You are all doing a great job, I love this thing!!

Okay, so I complained about repeats earlier in the thread and this morning I made a mega-station of sorts, with most of my selections in there, and it's been more to my liking, in that I didn't feel compelled to switch around or to another medium because it was playing too much of the same sort of thing.

That being said, I'd still love to just play anything with "Busy Horn Section" without having to try to train it to do it. Or maybe a seed with everything and exclude my way down to what I want. Mostly because it'd be fun. I'd also enjoy a "least popular" theme, but that's the kind of person I am.

Thx for the advice. Here's some advice for the admins: There's a question in the FAQ that is similar to this topic:

"How do I tune my Pandora stations? What happens when I give a thumbs up/down? How do I control the variety of music that plays on my station?"

I think the answer to this should be more easily accessible from the main page. A lot of newbies might give up on Pandora because this info is buried in the FAQ and the blog. Teach a man to fish...

Sometimes I'd like to hear other songs whose lyrics are related - same subject matter. Is this possible?

There are some things I have found do help to create better stations, and if they help me, I think they're bound to help everyone else.

1. Don't create stations from songs that you've never heard Pandora play. It seems that not every song on every album is in Pandora. I assume because it costs a fortune to analyze each song and there's more focus on new artists than on every song by current artists, but regardless of the reason, it means that Pandora may not know the attributes of a particular song you create a station with. In this case it seems to create a station as if you had given it the artist of that song instead, which isn't helpful if you like something specific to that one song. Pandora never plays the songs it doesn't know the particular attributes of, so if you've heard Pandora play a particular song, it's safe to use.

2. Choose two songs to compare every song you give feedback to. Pick whichever two songs are a good choice for you. Usually, on a scale of 1 to 5, I pick a song that's a 3 and a song that's a 4. Then for each song that plays, I ask myself "if I had to listen to one of these songs on repeat all day long, which song would I want that to be?" If the song that is playing is my first choice, I thumb it up. If it is my last choice, I thumb it down.

When I first rated songs that way I was surprised at how it changed my decisions. In particular, it seems I was rating punk songs on a punk scale and other songs on another scale. So if a punk song was a really good punk song, it got a thumbs up, even if I liked it less than another song which was a really bad pop song that I thumbed down. Comparing to the same two songs every time ensures that all songs are rated on the same scale. It's great for those nostalgic songs which are fun to hear again, but not something you really like more than what you listen to currently.

Hmm, I had another suggestion... What could it have been? Choosing seeds and giving feedback,
there isn't much else a person can do. Oh yeah...

3. Don't try too hard to limit a station to a particular sound. I may want a station which plays only upbeat lyrics, but thumbing down every song that has downbeat lyrics seems to tell Pandora that lyrics are all that matters. If Pandora plays a good song that happens to have downbeat lyrics, the best thing to do seems to be to simply let it play it. It's not the worst thing since I do like the song, and thumbing it down seems to tell it I don't like that style of music and so when it does play upbeat lyrics it plays them with some other style of music. If nothing else, it's inevitible that it will play a song with downbeat lyrics that I really don't like eventually, and I can thumb that one down.

None of those three make a really big difference in my stations, but they all help a little, and may well help someone who likes Pandora's song selection a lot.

As for JJZ's comment about a seed for everything... I'd love to have that. New songs that I don't like are generally more fun to listen to than the same songs I've heard many times which I don't like. I wonder what I might discover as well. I didn't even know that I liked the music that I like now when I began listening to Pandora. I used to listen to Hum and The Get Up Kids, but when Pandora wouldn't play anything I liked, I theorized it was because after six years with only my MP3 collection I had forgotten what really bad music sounded like. So I typed in "Aaron Carter" to be reminded. I hadn't heard anything by him before, I'd only heard that he sucked, but by dumb luck I actually liked his songs. It makes me wonder what other music is out there that I would like if only I ever heard it. I've already tried everything else that I've ever heard really sucks, but without so much luck. I think it would be fun to be able to explore music like that.

I tried creating a "random artists" station once, and from that Pandora offered up "various artists" as a possible choice and so I went with that. It kind of worked because it seems a lot of CDs are by "various artists" and were for whatever reason the individual songs were put into Pandora as being by Various Artists. However, the songs seem to be mostly Blues and something like Rap, so it isn't very random.

I also think it'd be cool if I could click "add music to this station" and type "upbeat lyrics" or the previously mentioned "busy horn section" and doing so would limit the station to songs with that feature. Then it could just appear in the "songs you added" list and if I got tired of it I could just delete it. It wouldn't require changing the current user interface and it wouldn't be there to confuse listeners who don't care.

Perhaps something even easier to do would be to create artificial music data for bogus songs like "Upbeat Lyrics" by The Music Genome Project. Then I could create an "upbeat lyrics" station and add "danceable grooves" and "punk influences" to it and listen to a random selection of songs with those attributes, possibly even fine tuning the other attributes with feedback from those song selections if I wish. Assuming it is something that would work, it seems like it would be easy to do.

About the interface: I see two different, conflicitng approaches handling Pandora (call it simple/ advanced).

The first is the "laid back, simple, user friendly" approach, that Pandora follows now. I like it, I don't want to give every decision too much thought and rate intuitively. There aren't too much button or links, and the whole interface is very clean. I think this is very important for new users. A cluttered website / interface would have chased me away in the beginning.

(btw. I'm a experienced Internet user. But there are so many websites and tools, that I don't have the nerve to install every plug-in and search a website for 20 minutes to get things going...)

The second approach that many users here would probably like to see is an "advanced mode". In this mode it should be possible "to dig really deep" if you like to do so. There you could put 20 different buttons to rate every nuance, style, gene, whatever.

My idea is to make a switch button to distinguish between "simple mode" and a (possible upcoming) "advanced mode". This way you would satisfy both groups. On the one hand, you can still introduce Pandora to new users in a painless, less irritating way. On the other hand everyone could then decide for themselves if and then they want to be confronted with more details and buttons.

What do you think about this?

I love the idea that you're trying to build up a new middle-class of musicians. I look forward to a better future for young musicians because of the internet's potential to help bands find their audiences, and I see Pandora helping in that respect.
Here are my top 5 suggestions for improving Pandora:
1. Display the song length and remaining time.
2. Shuffle or randomize the songs. If I have a station, but then I add a new artist with a distinctive style (Bob Marley for example), then suddenly I'll get many reggae songs in a row instead of sprinkled randomly throughout.
3. Add a link to find tour information about the artist. If I provide my zip code you should be able to put an icon on the songs of artists that will be performing nearby.
4. Add the ability to fine-tune a station. It would be nice to choose the recording year of the music that plays. For example, I might be nostalgic for the 80's etc. And it would be nice to have a station that features the female singers of jazz. Maybe there should be a way to indicate gender of the singer?

Thanks for listening!

"Oh Pandora, I adore ya.
I implore ye, don't ignore me."
(Sue Townsend)

There are no bad stations. Just ones that don't like as much as we thought we would. Take for example the "How the heck is this song related?" question. Well, if we accept the premise that music has genes, we can look at some of the people with whom we share genetic material and ask the same question: "What the heck are YOU doing in MY family tree?"
It is a mystery that cannot, and perhaps should not, ever be solved.

In general, I counsel patience, especially if you are new to this service.* I have enjoyed those "Ah-ha!" moments when I understand (or think I do) why the program behaves a certain way. Unless my first theory is right and it just reads my mind.
Finally, as someone else has said: Please, please, take a moment to read the FAQs.

*This comment should not be taken as a jab at "newbies," or anyone else for that matter.

It seems like some songs are analyzed according to their musical content and some not. I added some Lyle Lovett songs to my station that are clearly not country in style e.g. "all my love is gone" - blues. But I get straight ahead country type music as a result.

I'm sure that evaluting and cataloging individual songs must be a monmumental task! However with an artist like Lovett who exhibits so much more variety in his music than his "genre" (country/rock) might indicate you almost have to.

Just wondering if some songs are categorized by a general "artist's style" rather than the song's individual musical characteristics?

When I first read the FAQ's, I thought I understood that:

* Adding music establishes the playlist (or "mix").
* Thumbing Up a song makes it and songs like it play more often.
* Thumbing Down a song deletes it from the playlist and causes songs like it to play less often.
* I never got the impression that Thumbing Up a song adds or deletes songs from the playlist (mix).

I had read this in the FAQs:
>>
* "Thumbs Up" makes that song and songs that sound like that song play more often
. . . .
Giving a song a Thumbs Up will cause Pandora to play that song, and songs that sound like it more frequently. It doesn't take many Thumbs Up to move a station towards a particular sound you like. You can give Thumbs Up to songs that are very different from each other. If you do this enough, you can expand your station in several different directions.
<<
http://blog.pandora.com/faq/index.html#88

Now, after reading your blog entry, I'm getting the impression that Thumbing Up a song changes the playlist/mix by adding certain songs and removing others from it.

You've written in this blog entry, "For more tightly controlled stations that don't stray too much, don't add too many ... thumbs ups; every time you add more music your station reaches out in another direction."
. . . .
"I've got both kinds of stations. ... The 'purer' stations have ... a few, if any, thumbs ups."

From the viewpoint of my initial impression, thumbs ups wouldn't cause a station to become less tightly controlled -- indeed, they would cause a station to be *more* tuned in. The station wouldn't become *less* pure, but rather *more* pure, as Pandora would gain more information about what I wanted to hear (at least, more often).

When I read your blog entry, I went back and deleted all of the thumbs ups in one of my stations, because I didn't want Pandora to be overly influenced by my thumbs ups. My station was practically reset! It was as if it had lost its way. It seemed to have much less of an idea of what to play. I have begun to retrain it again, carefully, sitting on my hands when necessary.

Please let us know if thumbs ups change the mix (or giant playlist). Do "thumbs ups... add more music"? Or do thumbs ups merely change the odds that songs with musical characteristics that are similar to the thumbed up songs will play more often than songs that do not.

adTHANKSvance (and thanks for processing the music requests I made when I first started listening to Pandora. Some of them are already in the database!),

Bob-Tuba

I too enjoy the variety stations and the more pure stations.

My only issue is that the big mashup station isn't really. It's a "pure" station for four or five tunes, then it switches to a different "pure" station.

The whole point is that I don't want to dwell on a style when I want variety.

I know it goes against the general principles of Pandora, but, I would like to have a "Don't Play" list. The algorithm accidentally picked a song from the Beach Boys and it totally ruined my day.

Is there a way to get the album name to be displayed?

Hey Bob-Tuba:

Yes, thumbs-upping a song, the way it's currently configured, will almost always add more music to your station. Depending on how different the song is from the current state of feedback on your station, anywhere from zero to a hundred new songs could start cycling through. Thumbs up will not delete anything, only add.

There's never any set playlist, and any feedback you give morphs your station. The number of songs that play and the specific songs that play are always in flux. Also, we're adding thousands of songs every week, which will enter into play on people's stations as we add them.

rkw:
To ban a song, thumbs down the song. To ban an artist, thumbs down two songs by that artist. (these are station-specific!)
Click on the song name for more song and artist info! (More to come soon, on this front.)

I mean absolutely no offense, and I really like Pandora, but:
WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?

Okay, what I mean by that is why is Pandora built so counter-intuitively? When I (or most people, I expect) give a song a thumbs up, it is because:
a) we want to hear that song more
b) we want to hear more music like it (including more music by the same artist, of the same genre, etc.)

The application:
If I am giving a station a lot of thumbs up, it is because I like what it is currently playing and what it to play more similar music. To me, it means "I approve of what you're doing here very much. Keep doing it."

My expectation is that if I give a station a lot of thumbs (up and down), it's going to get a VERY good idea of what I like and don't like, and stick to what I like and avoid what I don't like. It is not, in my mind, a license for Pandora to play whatever it feels like.

I expect that my expectations will be those of most users. Much better to change the way Pandora handles music approval & selection than to force people to learn a system that is counter-intuitive and frustrating.

What I'd like to see Pandora doing is taking all of the music I've given thumbs up to, seeing what they all have in common, taking the music I've given thumbs down too, seeing what they all have in common, and keeping to the music I like, and avoiding the stuff I dislike, trying to figure out what the common threads of it all is, and then honing in on that. What are the most common elements of liked songs? Try to find songs that has as many as possible (or, to be more complicated [please, yes!], what are the most common combinations of elements that are found in liked songs?) Stick to those, and avoid unwanted elements/combinations of elements.

I expect that if Pandora was doing this, giving a thumbs up to similar songs would help hone a station (and giving a thumbs down would also do so). Particularly for people like me who keep stations more focused than simply "songs I like" (one generally softer, one generally harder)

While possible that a station would change and broaden or shift over time this way, it's more likely to simply be a shift towards music I more consistently like, or a broadening to try to find music I seem to consistantly like.

That's interesting... that's the exact opposite to how I thought it would work. I thought if you added more artists it would further refine the kind of music you wanted to listen to.

I'll tell you what option I'd really like for honing a station's sound. I'd like to be able to favor specific elements of the music genome that songs share. That is, when I click on "why did you play this song?" and it tells me "a prominant flute part," I'd like to be able to approve that reason specifically. The problem is that by seeding a station with even only one song, I can't hone exactly what element of that song I'm looking for more of. I would have to thumbs-down 100s of songs to get the essential elements of a station I want to play more.

Didn't I say in a previous blog comment that adding songs and thumbs up seems to have no effect on quality of song selection and thumbs down seem to cause my favorite songs to disappear from the playlist? Well, if not, I was definately thinking it at least.

Bob-Tuba's revelation seems to explain this behavior completely. Like Bob-Tuba and Michael-Forest and gorman, I too was under the impression that the purpose of feedback was to improve Pandora's knowledge of what music I like and don't like. However, it seems that thumbs up are equivalent to adding a song to a station and thumbs down simply remove similar songs from a station.

So if thumbs up aren't really feedback at all, but simply a shortcut to "add a song to this station," then how does Pandora know which of the attributes of the songs that I thumb down are actually ones that I like? This is a problem because those songs should be similar in many ways to what I like, otherwise they shouldn't have played at all. Without a true "thumbs up" to say "this is the combination of attributes that I like" it would seem that Pandora is left to simply exclude from the station any songs that would play on a station created for the song that I thumbed down. But...Pandora thinks that song is similar to what I like, and so a lot of songs that I like would play on that station. So adding songs and thumb ups wouldn't affect station quality because the songs added to the station would simply be whatever would play on individual stations created for each song added or thumbed up, which on average is going to have the same ratio of likes to don't likes, and thumbs down will reduce the quality by removing some of the songs that I actually like from the station.

So it would seem that whatever you get when you first create a station is as good as it is going to get. You might get a better station if you created a station with the wrong song for you and thumb up a better choice, but if you create one with your favorite song, then any thumbed up song is going to be a less than favorite, and when its similar songs are added, quality of song selection is reduced. This makes my experiences make a lot of sense.

If Pandora isn't really analysing my feedback but simply using it to compile a playlist then it can't learn what I think makes a song similar or different. It's simply making a playlist based on what it thinks makes a song similar or different. That can easily work well for the majority of people, but unless everyone is the same, it won't work for everyone.

Yes! You guys have got it right. Feedback hones your stations and feedback adds more songs in the styles you are indicating. Keep in mind too that I have only scratched the surface here; there's more subtle things at work as well.

Our mission is to play music that you'll love; to help you discover more music that you'll love. Your "thumbs" feedback is a critical element in that; we'll continue to refine how we're using it.

I'd like to be able to choose the language I wish to listen to. For example, if I make a station with Francis Cabrel or Lara Fabian, it will play French music from these artists, but mostly English music to discover. Same thing with Spanish music. The language often matches the mood of music I wish to listen to. Thanks!

Lucia,

I'm sure I speak for more than myself when I thank you *wholeheartedly* for your feedback!

Now, back to the search for *real* understanding.

(1) You wrote, "thumbs-upping a song, the way it's currently configured, will ... add ... anywhere from zero to a hundred new songs."

That looks a little like an FAQ that lets us know that, "Typically adding one song adds over a hundred songs to the station."
http://blog.pandora.com/faq/index.html#18

This makes me wonder if thumbs-upping a song has the same effect as adding the song.

However, you also wrote, "there's more subtle things at work as well."

This would explain why, when I deleted all the thumbs-ups from my "More Favorites" station, the station didn't just get smaller or more "tightly controlled," but it got *less* 'honed' -- or, as I prefer to think of it: dialed in.

(2) Now, for the million dollar question:

Scenario: I hear a song that I really like on one of my stations. I don't want to sit on my hands. I like the song so much that I really want to let Pandora know. (How can I let Pandora know what I want to hear, if I don't let it know what I like?)

Yes, I want to tell Pandora to play that song more often, and that I would be happy to hear songs that are like it more often too.

However, my reason for wanting to provide this feedback is to *hone my station*. I have a carefully crafted station, and I want it to be even *more* carefully crafted.

I don't want my station to be "too" varied, nor do I want it to play "too many" different styles.

Does your blog post indicate that, if I thumbs-up the delightful song, my station will stray?

I don't mind it if the station reaches out in another direction. Indeed, I like pop/rock, jazz with driving lower brass parts and Tchaikovski, and I want to hear all of what I like.

Can I tell Pandora:
Play this song more often -- and add more songs that are like it by all means. But why not then delete zero to a hundred songs that are *least* like my thumbed-up and added songs, and *most* like my thumbed-down songs?

Finally, feel free to adjust the *frequency* of play of each song to match my feedback and added songs (if you can). (For example, from my feedback, Pandora should be able to tell that I want it to play T'Pau's Heart and Soul *more often* than Tchaikovski's Symphony No. 4.)

Go ahead and play "a whole slew of" pop/rock, but don't *stray* in any other way than the ways that my feedback and added songs indicate.

That would totally hone my station!

Maybe there should be two different thumbs-up choices:

Thumbs-Up #1: "Play this song, and songs like it, more often -- AND make my station more varied.. and stray away!"
Thumbs-Up #2: "Play this song and songs like it more often, but do NOT stray. Just become more honed while simultaneously staying just as tightly controlled as you are now, if not *more* tightly controlled."

In fact, why not let us directly control how varied or tightly controlled our stations are? Want more variety? Adjust the variety extent control!

I agree with Szilvia: it would be better to have a 5 level (or at least 3) rating system, so that the user can 'fine-tune' his stations in a better way.
Giving a song more 'stars' would mean 'Play this and other songs like this more often', and less would mean 'Play it again, but more ocasionally', similar to what Bob-Tuba commented earlier and called 'the frecuency'.

I agree that the main problem I have with the feeedback system, as it is, that narrowing a station's sound is difficult. Unfortunately, it appears that the only way to do this is with thumb-downs.

Lets say I want a station that plays a lot of funky stuff, but I don't like horn sections. In an attempt to generate a station with the sound I want I would have to eliminate many groups that have the funky sound I'm looking for because some of their songs have horn sections. Is there any way I could hone my stations using the elements of the music genome directly? It seems like several people have asked for this kind of control. Is something like it in the works?

I like the 'advanced mode' idea. I've got several stations with a LOT of thumbs up and thumbs down.

I tend to try for things that seem to be fairly far down on the analysis list - for instance, probably my most-tweaked station is one in which I was trying for folk - but only folk with two-part (or plus) vocal harmony. It would have been a lot easier to get if I could have TOLD Pandora that I was looking for vocal harmony and folk influences.

Any rate - I like to play with Pandora and see what it does, so I try to do oddball things like that. Can be fun - and I did eventually get an excellent folk station out of it. WITH lots of vocal harmony...

My husband showed me the article about Pandora in PC magazine a couple of days ago and my first thought was "Oh goodie, someone who will understand my off-the-beaten-track tastes!" Well, yes and no... I've been having a lot of fun playing with it, I love the interactive nature of it and use the thumbs up/down feature quite a bit, and keep trying to add artists and songs. I like hearing new things and am not bound by narrow categories, so it's kind of exciting waiting to see what it will come up with next.

The biggest frustration for me is that 90% of the artists I like are not in the music banks. I have yet to find a single African artist that Pandora has heard of, and the worldbeat repertoire in general is severely limited. Since this is the bedrock of my musical taste, it makes it kind of difficult. I have seeded it with various latin and brazilian artists as well as some pop songs that have a strong worldbeat influence, and with a lot of tinkering and editing, I've been getting some positive and interesting results within the scope of what Pandora has in its banks, but it always seems to want to bring me back into a more mainstream pop sound when I really want to go the other direction. I'm hoping that you will be broadening the musical base in the near future.

Another thing that would be helpful is if there were a way to say what you liked or disliked about a particular song. I realize this could get pretty unwieldy, but if it were just broken down into a) instrumental arrangement, b) vocals, c) tempo, and d) other, that would help a lot. Several times Pandora has come up with songs that I like the instrumentals a lot but hate the vocals, and I'd kind of like to encourage the one and not the other.

Anyway, I can see that it's a work in progress, so I just wanted to encourage you to keep working on it!

Great Article Lucia! I really enjoy reading your posts -- I was explaining this to a friend the other day when she commented how much she loves her Pandora stations but they can get monotonous ... she's now adding more music to them, but I think you've explained in much more detail than I did in our little exchange that went something like this.

"o, you can add more songs to the station"

"really, awesome!"

and then we talked about music and all the great bands we've discovered.

keep writing posts -- I might just fire up my rss reader. :)

Please, Lucia, add some Cape Verdean music. It is some of the most beautiful music in the world - ever (i.e., Cesaria Evora, Mayra Andrade, Bana). Go to caboverde.com.

Hey, I just found Pandora, and it's a really cool concept. I was just wondering if you consider thematic elements in the song when matching songs. I fed the station Toby Keith's "Whiskey Girl", which I love. The station then played me another Toby Keith song "As Good As I Once Was", which is musically similar, but I can't stand the lyrics to the song. I gave it a thumbs-down, but then the station stopped playing upbeat country songs....Anyway, just curious.

Check out Public Property, an excellent reggae influenced band from Iowa City, Iowa! Go to www.publicprop.com to hear some of their music.

Over the last month or so since I've heard about pandora I tell everyone I know with a computer cause in such short amount of time I've found over a hundred different artist that I can add and you have been able to find everyone I have typed in if not uner artist then under song title so just cause you didn't find someone try a song by that artist it's not let me down. I'm just so amazed and impressed with pandora I can't believe I'm just hearing about it. I could of never had the music bumping to all the music I like on any radio station or XM satilite station. Lets face it taking the time to load music you like into an Ipod just don't compare for us people who don't have that kind of time searching for each and ever little song we like. It could take me forever to do it that way. Pandora is easy fast and in no time your listening to the music you like without searching all over the web. Pandora the one stop shop for everone!!!

I'm casting another vote for Stuart Davis. Check out stuartdavis.com and get his music on your site. You won't be sorry.

I personally would rate more songs if the ratings were finer-grained, and the consequences of a thumbs-down less drastic. Say on a 0-10 scale, where 10 meant 'play this every other song--at least', and 0 meant 'erase this from your database--for everyone, not just me'.

'Thumbs up' would be about an 8,
'I'm tired of this' about a 3, and
'thumbs down' about a 1.

Are you familiar with Alexandria Digital Literature (http://www.alexlit.com)? There seems to be some resemblance, in a different field.

For the past few days, whenever I've tried to access the definition of a shared station there is no info displayed- it''s all blank. I hope this will be corrected soon?

I'm interested in reading the lyrics when a song captures my interest. Any way to do this through Pandora instead of having to surf outside the web site?