I'm scared!

I mean... I'd be first to agree that Pandora doesn't get it right 100% of the time, or even 10% for that matter, but I'm not so convinced that the opinions of random individuals are really the best way to solve the problem. As much as I like this idea and I'm actually quite excited to see how it turns out, I really do wish it were optional on a per-station basis, so that I can create a station and hear purely what Pandora thinks, and another station to hear purely what everyone else thinks.

There are several songs I've found that I like in Pandora which the first, second, and even third times Pandora played them I thought "why is it playing this?" However, once I get past whatever stigma is making me reject the song, I find it's really quite a good match in very many ways. What happens if no one else likes this song, among other reasons, because they didn't hear it a dozen times like I did? Does Pandora then never play it again for any of us?

I really think it's not that the Genome doesn't have enough information, but just that the algorithm which selects the songs is flawed. To be more specific, I think it weights songs added to the station moreso than it does feedback given to the station, and I believe this causes the songs selected to not reflect what the current feedback suggests that the listener likes, but the algorithm itself doesn't work unless the songs it's getting feedback on are the ones which the current feedback suggests, and so any feedback, positive or negative, just makes song selection get progressively worse. So Pandora only works if you like what it starts playing right away, because that's as good as it's going to get. Adding one more mis-factor to the equation, the opinions of other listeners, seems to me like something that will only make the problem even worse.

My theory of Pandora's song selection seems to be supported by my experience with Pandora over the last six months. Deleting feedback always improves the song selection on the station. Adding more songs to the station just makes it play more music, but doesn't change the quality of the song selection. However, manipulating Pandora to play every song that I like and thumbing those songs up results in a station that works wonderfully. Assuming my theory is correct, this is all what I would expect to happen. (However, that's not validation. The theory was crafted to fit the evidence, it didn't predict it.)

The important thing to note on that last one was that the songs for which feedback was given were selected by me, not by Pandora. I think that if I had simply given feedback only on songs that Pandora selected on it's own, Pandora would have never played as wide a variety of music and so it would have never figured out by feedback on those songs alone what it is that I really like about music. I've had this station for a week or two now and it's the happiest I've been with Pandora in the last 6 months. I think that song selection on musical features alone can work, but that it just doesn't the way that it's currently done.

I've always wished Pandora had an ability to let me listen to what other people who like the music that I listen to like, but at the same time, I've always wished it were entirely optional so that I could also hear similar music to the music that I like that other people don't like. I hope you will make it that way eventually. I don't want to see what makes Pandora unique dilluted away.

This sounds like it ought to be great news -- I'll have to fire up some of my more "problematic" stations to see how smart the other users are ;)

When you say that it's going to have an impact on everyone's "Massive Attack Radio" -- are you referring to stations similar by station name, stations initially seeded by said artist or a more delicate consideration of the overall rating(s) in the station? I'm assuming the latter, as it seems to jive the most with the rest of Pandora -- just checking out of curiosity.

Hmmm. What if I think that Whitney Houston does go with Massive Attack? Does this new process mean that the taste and feedback from one listener out there then limits the scope of what I get to hear?

And how does this work for stations based on more than one artist/song? Does a feedback decision propagate out to stations based on the individual artists?

I'm just asking :o)

This is a giant step forward for your service. It keep getting better and better.

I have little faith in the general public to do a decent job.

Hi Richard,

When we first started talking about this idea, we approached it with some fear as well. We gave this a great deal of thought, and experimented with several approaches, before landing at this answer.

There are three key elements to understand about what we're doing. First the feedback has to be overwhelming. Before we make a change based on collective input it has to be crystal clear that the audience overall thinks a song is a bad fit for a particular station. Second, that influence is only ever used in the context of the station where we received the feedback. Finally, we actually never fully eliminate a song from a station based on community feedback. In practice we just dramatically lower the frequency of play for a song. This does enable people, over time, to still hear it and they can "rescue" it for their own station with a thumbs up... and if enough people do that over time, the frequency will come back up for everyone.

In the end there were really two things that that helped make us comfortable with the decision to move forward with this plan:

- First we looked at playlists for thousands of stations before and after the community influence was applied. Universally the stations got better. That turned out to be true when you apply any frame that you like -- Are the revised stations better at inroducing users to great new music they've not heard before? Yes. Do the stations play songs that sound more like the original listener inputs? Yes. Are the stations more likely to play music that you'll love? We think, again, the answer is yes.

- Second, the stations just sound better. We think they sound much better. The proof for us is always in the listening, and across genres, across eras, across all musical boundries the community influenced stations are just more fun to listen to.

This change certainly isn't the end of the evolution of our "musical match" approach -- quite the opposite. We remain completely committed to that element of Pandora and we really do work every day at improving the Music Genome data and algorithms.

Have a listen, and as always we're dying to know what you think.

Tom
CTO @ Pandora

That's pretty cool. I guess it means matches will gradually improve from now on (at least according to the average listener's opinion).

One thing I've wanted since I started listening to Pandora is to be able to see the actual Music Genome Project database information on a song ("extensive vamping", "major key tonality", "acoustic aesthetic", etc... I assume that the complete data on each song contains a lot more information and technical terms). Partly out of curiosity, partly out of a desire to control my stations more directly: I'd rather edit a station and say "stop playing vocal music!" than have to keep giving it more examples and clicking "I don't like it". (For the record, "Wedding Nails" by Porcupine Tree features neither "subtle vocal harmonies" nor "mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation"; it's a hard rock instrumental.)

I know this would make the interface a lot more complex, so you'd probably want to hide most of the additional information by default and only show it to "advanced" users or something. And obviously you can't add complex features like this overnight. I just think it'd be a good long-term goal. The simple, intuitive interface can actually be a bit frustrating to those of us who know a bit about music, and of course mis-classified music is frustrating for everyone.

>> Hmmm. Does this new process mean that the
>> taste and feedback from one listener out
>> there then limits the scope
>> of what I get to hear?

It takes an overwhelming amount of feedback on a particular song, in a particular station context for the community influence to have an effect. The community as a whole has to very clearly tell us that a song is a bad match before anything happens. Even then, the song isn't completely eliminated its frequency of play is just radically reduced. Also keep in mind that the community influence is only applied when we're sure that the playback context is the same as the context in which we received the feedback from the community.

Tom
CTO @ Pandora

Perhaps another way to improve this would be to create degrees of like and dislike. Rather than just saying, I Like It or I Don't Like It, there could be options for I love it, i like it, its okay, neutral, i dont like it or i despise it. The idea about taking others opinions could then take into account the degree to which users liked or disliked a song, enabling higher accuracy. This is no doubt far more complicated than the present system and I have no idea whether its feasible or not, but if it is, I think it would greatly improve Pandora's ability to meet the desires of its users.

Call me a spankin' newbie, but this is great that you guys can pipe music through the draconian proxied firewall here at .

No doubt you guys are growing leaps and bounds and need to take a step at a time, but I recently ran into a problem .... I'd like to start a station on an artist the search does not pull up. This is clearly the wrong place to post this so I ask , is there a suggestion box somewhere for artists/songs which I may have overlooked ?

and/or

What about fledging artists uploading their own content ? (the I.P. laws are very tricky, I understand) -- maybe you could have a "trial" basis for those spankin' new artists if everyone rates them as junk then they get the boot off the ol' system. I envision a tiered, moderated system maybe like a Slashdot model to shuffle the load off you guys some when listening to these to-be-integrated songs/artists -- at least add some moderators to do a first-cut on the musical garbage which may be submitted.

I'm almost positive this has been discussed before, but please humor me, I couldn't find it.

I'll monitor this section today for a reply.

Thanks !

Hi theorem21,

We keep an eye on the searches that fail each day -- even those that return results but ultimately lead to a "cancel" click from the person trying to create a station. We track those artists and songs down and add them to the Genome. You're also welcome to send ideas to suggest-music@pandora.com.

We take indie album submissions via postal mail. There are instructions on how to submit your own music to Pandora in our FAQ (http://blog.pandora.com/faq/index.html#31)

Tom
CTO @ Pandora

OK, but when I search for "Mozart" why does Pandora ask me if I meant "Mozart Rottweiler" or "Bizzart"?! I meant WOLFGANG AMEDEUS MOZART, arguably one of the most famous artists of all time. How can there be now Mozart compositions in Pandora's arsenal?

Hi Eric,

The approach we take starts with what we call "music analysis". Our team of music-analysts listen to music one song at a time and document the underlying musical characteristics for each song. Right now we analyze Jazz, Rock, Country, Hip Hop, Dance, and Electronica music. We're also hard at work on Latin music. We love classical music too, and have designed an approach for capturing the unique features of classical music -- you can imagine that the instruments, playing style, harmonics, and construction are different enough that a different vocabulary of attributes is required. We'll be working our way through a catalog of classical music, but it is a time consuming process. It will take us a while to get to "critical mass," but we will get there.

Tom
CTO @ Pandora

Tom, thanks so much for the good explanations. I figured that you guys had thought through the process, but the details were just a little shy in your first post.

I love Pandora and find a new musical gem every day. Keep up the good work!

Hi,

first, big up for your work ;)

second: i think that pandora need additional work to get around one problem: a genome does not include the soul. Or in other works, you does not describe the Music Mood, only his technical parts.

You can describe "Massive Attack Unfinished Sympathy" as whatever kind of category, with a single female voice etc, but you did not describe that it has a power full mood, a forward looking love song. Or whatever kind of feeling you put into that song, what it means to you.

And a basic thump up/down will not work, you need a way to bring a connection that works over your genome categories - a connection between Aphex Twin - Girl Boy Song and Massive Attack - Unfinished Sympathy.

anyway: the current status is pretty good, amazing work, but it will not be perfect.

Thanks for the help. I look forward to Pandora's new innovations !

hey thats tight!!!

i love this product... i listen to it all day, every day at work. i greatly appreciate the fact that the "CTO" directly responds to user suggestions on this blog.

my primary suggestion for improvement, though not directly related to the change discussed in this post, is to eliminate the rule that two "thumbs downs" eliminates an artist completely from your station. there are numerous artists that i love to listen to, but who have at least two songs that i find terrible. i find that i have to be careful in thumbing certain songs, because i don't want to completely exclude these artists!

keep up the great work, and thanks for the service...

Hmmm....not sure if this is a good thing or not. One thing I've said to people about web2.0 and tagging is that not everyone tags things in the same way. Take for example "The Beatles" one person may categorize them as Rock, another as classic rock, another as alternative, so where is the line drawn. That is one reason that I prefer Pandora over Last.fm. Neural Networks baby!

Sup,
I just noticed you guys have a new sponsor! Johnny Walker Hard Liquor. Finally you guys are getting some attention from sponsors other than ipod. Congratulations! Keep up the good work.

Hey, I just wanted to say this is one of the best sites I have ever found! I sit in cubicle of four desks and one person controls the radio. Well needless to say the volume goes up/down, stations change. With Pandora, I just popped in a set of earbuds to the speakers and listen all day long to what type of music that fits my mood. Not only can I change the type of music, but I get introduced to new songs and artists. I am already making my Christmas list. :)

Along the lines of having varying degrees of dislike or likes, perhaps we could have a limited number of REASONS why we like or dislike a song. Oftentimes I don't like a singer, but I like the song, or vice versa. (I don't know how feasible this is, but it's a thought...)

Secondly, if there was a way to allow users to shape the specific genomes per station a bit more, that would be helpful. As in, if I'm creating a station of Women Piano Pop singers, I don't want any guys showing up, nor do I want classical songs. See what I mean? If there was a way we could select (or unselect) 8-16 areas to help shape the station, it would work even better! :)

My two cents...

Kevin

WHen are you hitting Illinois? I'm guessing you will be in Chicago...love to meet you guys...
The Food and Water Guy....
JW

Can you update the bitrate on pandora. It's almost unlistenable, what is it, 24kbps acc?

Hey new user,

We stream 128Kbps MP3.

Tom

Please.... I mean, PLEASE come to South America guys! Perhaps you can add some spanish music to the site... Greets, Rod.

Please don't pass up us folks in the Southwest. Phoenix has some great sound! I especially love Sonorous! I would more than happy take you to one of my favorite restaurants to do a podcast interview of you for Daily Eats if you visit Phoenix.

I just happened to read a comment on slashdot about Pandora the other day, which introduced me to it. Great service guys, I'm really enjoying it, I linked to it on my blog too so some other people can enjoy it. I was thinking though, it would be even more awesome if you released a downloadable, standalone version, so I don't have to keep my browser open all the time that I want to use it. It's still awesome the way it is, though, so I'm not going to whinge too much. It would be even more awesome though. kthxbye.

My initial reaction to this change was negative since it seemed to bit a step backwards towards the archaic social recomendation approach of at least one of your competitors. But when I thought a bit more about, I became less alarmed.

There's actually a spectrum of subjectivity in the information which could be coded into a music genome. I imagine that *most* of the genes coded in Pandora's genome are not mechanically measureable (for instance, the length of the track), and, therefore, are not purely objective. Many of the genes are, most likely, undesputably objective (like, say, the time signature), but can only be assessed by human experts (thus, admitting the possibility of mistakes). Some of the genes are probably fairly subjective (the whole schema around genre, for instance) even if they are assessed by experts.

Thus, because there already is a spectrum of subjectivity already present in the Pandora genome (and almost certainly necessary in any such muscial genome), I am open to the idea of including some relevant socially assessed genes (which this new process is *functionally* even if it is not coded in the same way as other genes).

I would recomend, however, to consider putting into place test and control structures (if they do not already exist) that would allow blind testing of such algorithmic changes in the wild. I'm sure you can count various thumb frequencies before and after making the kind of tweek you're announcing here, but doing so is not quite as effective as getting those same thumb frequencies on a random 30% of the listeners runnning the new version in parallel to the old and comparing the results.

Of course, a much bigger priority (and contrary to the preceeding paragraph) for me personally would be making the client small enough to run on any of the 128mb pocket devices that are currently available. The first generation UMPC's are powerful enough to run Pandora, but they're not yet small enough to convince me to buy one. We need either smaller 256mb machines or a smaller Pandora client.

Hiya!

Love Pandora, my fave musical wallpaper to hang at work. One peeve -- when I type in a particular artist/song, it's because I loooove that particular artist/song. But that seems to get lost in the pursuit of new "similar" music that I might also love.

The station seems to meander from the original artist/song (say, Neko Case) to a similar artist/song (Ryan Adams) to an artist/song that is more similar to Ryan Adams than Neko Case, and so on -- a small distinction that multiples with every artist/song and thumb up/down until there is little resemblance to Neko Case. Rather than use my original input as the focal point of the station and the yardstick to measure every artist/song to be played on that station, the station has a hard time maintaining its original character.

Anything my virtual thumb and I can do about that?

Two cents,

Katie

This site has revolutionized my work day. I can't thank you enough!!!

I concur with Katie above. I have also found that some of my stations have "wandered away" from their origin. I certainly do not mind suggestions with wide variety, but I'd prefer a station to "remember its roots", if you will.

I also would like to have the 'thumbs down' be less strict. I have multitude of favorite artists, who have produced some titles they'd rather shouldn't have... On the other hand, I understand that it would disagree with the clearly stated principle of evaluating the music by its qualities, not by the artist. But then again, deleting the artist entirely based on two 'thumbs down' is doing just that: Making judgement by the artist, not music!

In general I must applaud any action on your part that limits the number of times Ms. Houston plays on my station. However, I do not mind banning her (or Paula Abdul or Cher or [shudder] Debbie Gibson, etc) via the downward pointing thumb method. I actually enjoy doing so.
As I have listened to Pandora I have found I don't have a CLUE what I want so there are no right or wrong songs/artists. Just songs/artists I don't happen to like. If the program did what I thought I wanted I would still be in ignorance of a lot of music that I now adore. In addition, when Pandora does play a song/artist that I loathe I at least stop and think about why the program thought it belonged on the station. Often I grit my teeth through a song to figure out why. Very interesting (though painful).
Thank you, Merci, Tak, again for all of your hard work.

jay

(Note: The first paragraph is meant as a joke. Sorta. But it is not meant to offend/annoy/taunt fans of the artists named in this post.)

Edit to my previous post regarding unwillingly banning an artist with only two "thumbs downs".
A genuine RTFM-error on my part...

The FAQ provided an answer: "If at any time you gave [a 'thumbed-down'] artist a 'thumbs up', they will not be banned."

However, my last statement stands.

A friend sent me a link to Pandora yesterday and I'm totally hooked! I haven't been able to stop fiddling with the darn thing, it's so much fun. I've run into that "wandering away from the original artist" phenomenon myself, but for the most part I'm really happy with this amazing FREE service and will be listening at work and home. And I have to take issue with the guy who said the sound quality sucked--I'm actually amazed at how good it is! I guess there is that varying sound levels thing from song to song that comes up once in a while, but I don't know what you can do about that. Anyhoo, thanks so much for the site and keep up the great work!

Pandora gets it right more than any traditional FM station that I listen to... by a long shot. Adding more weight to user feedback is still a good move though, as all the Web 2.0 user-based systems have shown. You guys are doing a great job with a great product; keep it up. :-)

I'm not sure, but I think that's exactly wrong. My station is still pretty stupid, although I love the stuff I hear. Also, the sound quality is great, but the balance is wildly erratic, from one selection to the next. Sometimes I can barely hear the vocal, or it's reedy, until I adjust it.

I have the feeling that these knuckleheads are doing the best they can, but the software needs more work. A few more options, but I sure love the music.

Thanks for your response, Tom. I should have known that the Pandora team wouldn't do something like this without really looking into the effects. I'm still concerned how it will work out, however, I'm also quite excited to see how it will work out. At the moment I can't claim to have noticed a difference, so I'll have to give it some more time.

I'd like to comment on a few things others have said, as I've spent a lot of time thinking about things and I think I have some relevant ideas. Besides, you did say "and as always we're dying to know what you think" in a reply addressed to me, so... Hopefully I'm not typing to much, I feel like I'm writing a book in a box meant to contain a few paragraphs. I really do wish Pandora had a proper message forum.

Anyway, about the subjectivity of the information in the Genome... At first I thought that this might have been the problem with Pandora matching music to me. I became especially concerned one day when Pandora told me that it was playing a Britney Spears song because it featured a male vocal, which isn't just subjectivity, but rather it's just incorrect. After putting some thought into how the playlist algorithm might work, I've come to the conclusion that some things not being exactly correct or even just plain wrong won't make a huge difference in the long run. There are so many different attributes measured for each song in the Genome and it's the sum total, not just an individual attribute or two, that determines wether or not I will like a song. For example, I really like upbeat lyrics, but upbeat lyrics alone aren't enough to make me really like a song. It needs other attributes as well, such as disco influences, dancable grooves, mild rhythmic syncopation, melodic songwriting, vocal harmonies, etc. Enough of those other attributes and it really doesn't even have to have upbeat lyrics. It's the sum of everything that determines wether or not I will like a song, and a few of those attributes being incorrect is really only going to change the outcome of a song that was already borderline to begin with. So it might make me miss out on some songs that I might find good enough to listen to but not good enough to buy, but it shouldn't have an effect so large that I miss out on would-be favorites. What I see when I click "why did you play this song" is 99% correct, so I would expect it to have no more than a 1% effect on the quality of song selection. That's just not signifigant enough to account for what I experience.

I see that several people have mentioned that a station drifts too much from their origional artist, moreso when feedback is given. This is what I've said, but I don't believe that modifying the song selection algorithm to force it to stick to the origional song moreso will do anything besides make the problem worse. Let me explain why I think this.

Were there an infinite number of songs, then there would be no reason why Pandora couldn't just take a song that a listener likes and play a hundred songs exactly like it. However, the key here is "exactly." When you start playing songs that aren't exactly the same, which Pandora is forced to do because it doesn't have an infinite music library, things get more complex.

If you ask people what kind of music they like, you'll get one of two responses, depending on how much they know about music. They'll either say something like "I like music with upbeat lyrics, melodic songwriting, vocal harmonies, mild rhythmic syncopation, disco influences, and/or a mid-tempo shuffle feel" or they'll say "I like music that is different."

My explanation for the latter is that when someone doesn't really know what they like about music, they still know wether or not they like an individual song. Because they don't like most music, most music ends up sounding like "most music" and those songs that they do like don't sound like "most music." So they end up thinking that they music they like is somehow completely different from other all music. It is, but no more so than all music is completely different from all other music. So listeners expect that the task is quite easy, not realizing that many songs have many similarities to the music that they like, just not the similarities that are the ones that they like.

So Pandora can easily pick a similar song, but it can't easily pick a similar song which is similar in the ways that are important to the listener.

You can try to make it better by making it focus more on the attributes that for the majority are more likely to determine wether or not they like a given song, but it only makes things better at the expense of the minority. For most people, lyrics don't really matter, just as long as a song is in the same genre they'll find it acceptable. For me, genre doesn't really matter that much, as long as the song has upbeat lyrics. Punk rock or pop with disco influences, as long as the lyrics are upbeat I like them both. So what works for most people doesn't really work for me.

This is why I'm concerned about the feedback of others. It's a safe bet to say that 99% of Jump5 listeners are more interested in the upbeat religious lyrics and the modern pop sound than anything else, and so kicking out "Electric Youth" by Debbie Gibson will probably make those listeners ecstatic, but that doesn't do a thing for the 1% who just like the disco influences, danceable grooves, upbeat lyrics, and the fact that the lyrics are so barely religious that you can forget that they are if you don't pay attention. It's an overwhelming opinion by the majority of listeners, and so of course it will improve the quality of song selection for the majority of listeners, but it's still an improvement for some at the expense of others.

I'd like to see more work in areas that really would benefit all listeners. Months ago I was told that one option under consideration was allowing listeners to rate seperate aspects of a song seperately, so that I could say that I like the lyrics, I don't like the vocals, and the rhythm is acceptable. If you can find half a dozen attributes like that to rate songs by, and provide a five point scale to rate each on, then Pandora gets almost 14 binary bits of information per feedback, as opposed to 1 binary bit of information per feedback that it gets now. I can't imagine how that wouldn't improve song selection. A listener would give feedback on a single song and by doing so give Pandora as much information as they do giving it feedback on 14 songs currently. Feedback on a dozen songs would be 167 bits of information, the same as feedback on 167 songs currently.

A simple interface is nice, but the simple fact is, when I'm listening to Pandora and I've run out of skips for the hour, I really have nothing better to do than fill out a detailed questionaire on my opinion of the song. As an added bonus, it would force people to really pay attention to a song and make certain they really don't like it before clicking "I don't like it" just because they don't like the cover art.

Besides, if you replaced the thumb up / thumb down interface with an interface that had all of those questions, but only a thumb up / thumb down button which sets them all as a group to "I like it" or "I don't like it" I'm sure you'd instantly recieve thousands of emails saying "but I do like the percussion in this song, so why do I have to say that I don't just because I don't like the vocals, lyrics, and instrumentation?" That's effectively what Pandora does now, as it has no way to know why I don't like a song, so it has to assume that everything about the song shares some responsibility. Of course, from the perspective of how the algorithm works, everything does share some of the blame, even those "upbeat lyrics" that I like share some of the blame for not being enough to make me like the song despite everything else, but even so, if everyone could see just how much more information they could give Pandora that they're currently not, I think they would be begging for the ability to give better feedback.

Also, I think the five point scale is really needed. There needs to be some way to tell Pandora "I like this, but of things that I like, I don't really like this," not to mention that feedback that says that a song is merely acceptable, not liked or disliked, is valuable feedback in and of itself, if you really think about it. I might thumb up several songs with electric instrumentation, but if I've said that many others were merely acceptable, then obviously electric instrumentation doesn't really do it for me.

Well, I could go on forever, so I'll stop here I guess. Besides, I feel like an idiot for talking so much about the song selection algorithm when I'm really only left to guess how I think it works based on my experience with it.

Richard,

More thought provoking comments; thanks for taking time to share them. Giving you more levers to control the specific kind of music that will play on the stations you're creating is definitely one of the areas you'll see us work on as we work to improve Pandora.

Tom
CTO @ Pandora

For what it's worth, it seems to me that there are three major elements that aren't handled well by the song filtering/selection process. In declining order of computer manageability:

* Tempo: From what I can see, the algorithm doesn't seem to have much success in responding to a station built around fast songs with a predominantly fast playlist. I'm not sure if this is because beats per minute was not factored into the original genome analysis, or whether I'm just having bad luck, but it seems like something that could be added to the database without requiring too much human analysis.
* Sampling: I've found that a station built on sample-heavy hip-hop tends to turn up large volumes of nearly sample-free rap. I suspect that it may be difficult for computers to detect sampling (assuming that computer analysis played some significant role in the genome construction), but adding that as a characteristic would be potentially useful.
* Lyrics: This is a real toughy from the perspective of automation, but I really think it would be useful if the system had >some< awareness of lyrical content, even if it was just limited to flagging a subset of songs "light hearted", "downbeat" and "humorous". I once created a station based on Weird Al Yankovic, and the first two non-Al songs that came up wer "We Are the Dead" by David Bowie and "I Can Say She's Allright" by Ron Wood. Adding Allan Sherman got me a Barry Manilow song. Not quite what I was looking for.

HI all, this is my first post on the blog. I have been using Pandora for about 3 weeks now and I love it!

Maybe it's just me, but I think that the current thumbs up or down system needs a bit of attention.
The corresponding actions are called "I like it" and "I don't like it" but it appears that their REAL meaning should be "I think it's a good match for this station" and "I don't think this belongs on that station" regardless of whether one actually LIKES the song or not.

Maybe there should be two ways to give feedback - one about PREFERENCE (for reason X) and one about the FITTING to a particular station.

If I hear a song I like I will tend to give it a thumbs up even if it pops up on the "wrong" station!

Just a thought. Keep up the great work!

PS: Is there any chance that users will ever learn a bit more about the inner workings of the Music Genome Project? I obviously understand you won't give away your nifty classification system (at least until it's patented!), but a bit more detail would be nice anyway...

I love what you're doing. I'm amazed that you provide such a variety --June Christy and Cassandra Wilson and music I've never heard life "After Fajr" by Ahmad Jamal. Thank you.

It seems that it should work just as well if you limit yourself to songs which you like and which have certain other traits, but it's been my experience that this doesn't work so well. I really don't like to listen to music that doesn't have upbeat lyrics, but never the less, telling Pandora that I like that depressing song that's just completely awesome in every other way makes it select better songs with upbeat lyrics, as does telling it that I don't like that awful song with upbeat lyrics.

Otherwise I'm telling it I don't like those features enough that they can make up for the absense of upbeat lyrics, which means that I'm telling it that it's overvaluing them. So it values them less, and starts playing awful music with upbeat lyrics, which is to be expected since I'm effectivelly telling it that upbeat lyrics are infinitely more important than everything else, and mathematically, that means that everything else is infinitely unimportant. So it only makes sense that doing this results in rotten stations.

If you try to limit a station to a specific genre, you're doing the same thing. You're telling Pandora that that genre is infinitely more important than the musical attributes which really matter to you. If you don't want to listen to that style of music, that's fine, but wait until Pandora plays a song of that style that you really don't like and tell it that you don't like that. You have to be honest about what you like or else Pandora can't hope to figure out what you like.

Indeed, the best station I have right now is a combination of every song I've heard Pandora play that I've really liked, regardless of lyrics or genre or anything else. It plays music I like, and it stays away from the downbeat lyrics despite the many downbeat songs that I thumbed up because it knows that I only liked those songs because of everything else about them.

The best thing to do is to pick two songs, one that you like and one that is the worst song you want to listen to. For each song, if you like it more than the one song, thumb it up, and if you like it less than the other, thumb it down. If you have the patience to rate every song, then just pick one song and rate them all relative to it. This way you're evaluating each song on an identical scale, which gives Pandora the best information it can get from you.

On the other hand, if you can convince yourself to never delete your feedback, then rating songs relative to the last couple of dozen that have played should work even better. However, this is much harder to do, and you can't delete any of your feedback because every song that is in it is there only because of the other songs in it and messing with it will mess the whole thing up. If all songs are rated on an identical scale then this matters less, but it still kind of matters.

However, I've also said before that deleting negative feedback improves song selection, so obviously my theories of how things work don't entirely match reality. However, the improvement in station quality that comes from thumbing up songs that I like but don't want to listen to is the second most signifigant thing I've found that I can do to improve station quality, so I highly recommend it.

Just got introduced to Pandora, and I'm addicted. I've only been listening to it for a couple of days but have to say that this is one of the most brilliant things I've seen on the web. So far I've only been listening to hip-hop and already I've discovered new artists. My downloading/shopping list grows every minute now. I don't really have anything to complain about... apart from the guys here saying that they don't have faith in the "general public" having any say in the music-thing. You ARE the general public! What are you complaining about!

Brilliant. Abso brilliant.

I think I remember the Music Genome Project from a while back, as some sort of clickable flash-based thingy. Maybe I'm wrong.

The premise is magnificent. I've already learned a lot about myself and how I perceive music. We stand to learn a lot about music as relates to sociology and culture. Term papers will surely be written.

Pandora is just about the only link I've given out and recieved a grinning 'thanks' from anybody, much less everybody. It's the topic of continuous discussion with those that have discovered it- create a station for every mood, build one 'perfect' station? I personally find I like everyone else's stations better than mine. That's okay with me.

Couple a' quick questions / ideas:

Q: Does lyrical / content have any impact on the "dj engine's" selections?

I: Does it make sense to have a "search on Google" button? I want to see pictures / bio's / fansites. I could copy, paste and such but I'm a big lazybones. Is there revenue for you guys here somehow?

Humungolicious exhaltations and adulations. Thumbs up!

Mariza is a hit in Portugal - and worldwide, but is not yet on Pandora. Why ? Check out Mariza "Tranparente", EMI 7243 4 77646 2 2 She puts a new twist on Fardo. Well worth the listen. Highly recommended. Bruce

Pandora definately knows about lyrics. Pandora has told me that it has played music because it features upbeat lyrics, humorous lyrics, romantic lyrics, offensive lyrics, explicit lyrics, ambiguous lyrics, heartbreaking lyrics, sad lyrics, lyrics about partying, lyrics about drugs and alcohol, all sorts of lyrics. Ask "why are you playing this song" while creating many different stations and you'll see all sorts of things after a while. I've also seen "an unintelligible vocal delivery" as well as many other vocal qualities, and of course many things about instrumentation, percussion, rhythm, and genre. It seems like Pandora knows something close to everything.

I do wish there were a list of all of these things somewhere, and for particularly ambiguous ones like "great lyrics" a description of the criteria that define them. For some time I ignored lyrics when rating songs because I didn't think that Pandora knew about them and so I didn't want to confuse it with song ratings that it couldn't possibly make sense of. Once I was told that it did know about lyrics, I started getting better song selections by rating songs based on their lyrics.

It's also easier for me to determine wether or not I like a song by trying to look at it objectively like Pandora does rather than trying to just listen and say "I like it" or "I don't like it." In particular, when I try to rate songs by choosing one song and rating every song that plays as better or worse than it, and a song plays that I haven't heard before, I can listen to the entire song and still not know for sure wether I think its better or worse than the other song. Looking at the criteria that I like makes it easier to decide. If a song has upbeat lyrics, my favorite synth, prominient percussion and good rhythm then I know I probably just need some time to get used to it, but if it doesn't have those things then I know I probably just haven't had enough time to realize I hate it.

This is the very reason why I don't trust feedback from other listeners. Even I don't know what music I like a lot of times, so I can't imagine how anything good could come of analysing the often mistaken feedback that I give to Pandora, and I doubt I'm the only one who makes mistakes.

There have been many songs that I've only come to like because of Pandora's insistance that they're quite like other songs that I like. The first time I heard "Spinnin' Around" by Jump5 I thought it was the most retarded piece of Disney trash I'd ever heard, but now, not only can I hear exactly why Pandora played it since it is quite like what I was listening to at the time, but Jump5 has also come to be my favorite artist.

I hate to think that I could have missed out on Jump5 just because an overwhelming number of listeners did exactly as I did the first dozen times I heard "Spinnin' Around" and thumbed it down. It's one of those songs that you have to allow yourself to like or else you'll just hate it. I can just so easily imagine a lot of people hearing that song for the first time and thinking "why do they even bother to analyse songs like this" and thumbing it down.

Anyway, on an unmentioned so far issue... I've noticed that it seems that a lot of CD's have only a few songs on them in Pandora, while others seem to have every track in Pandora. For example, I think I've heard Pandora play every song from "ABBA Generation" by A Teens, but yet if I create a "Super Star Kidz" station I know which song will be played first because it's the only song from that CD that Pandora ever plays. The very first time I heard "Up, Up, Up" I didn't have to hear more than 30 seconds of it to know it was one of my favorite songs, but given it's the only song from the whole CD in Pandora, I kind of feel like maybe the people doing the music analysis thought "no one's going to like this trash" and didn't bother to analyse more than that one song. I can easily imagine most people hating it, it's probably most people's definition of awful, but I like it.

I think that the professionals who write those songs and produce those CDs of Disney trash are really good at what they do. They may be employed to write music which most of the population is conditioned to hate with a deep passion the moment they first hear it, but I think that what they do is awesome and I certainly hope it isn't being ignored under the assumption that no one could possibly like it. I love it.

Anyway... I've got a whole box full of CDs which I no longer listen to anymore. The music I've found through Pandora is just so much better that when I listen to my pre-Pandora CD's I'm lost to understand how those songs could have ever been my favorites, let alone even something I like to listen to. So while I'd like to see Pandora make better song selections, I'm concerned because I hate to think of what I'd be listening to now had it performed perfectly and given me exactly what I wanted. I didn't know what I wanted.

I find this Music Genome Project really really good, so good job guys. The idea of it is really innovative, and I like where you guys are coming from.

A point I want to bring up is whether lyrics are taken into consideration. For quite a number of songs, lyrics are also pretty much important in "the essence" of the music.

re: Lyrics. I am surprised to hear the program does not match lyrics that well. Since I clicked thumbs up on one song that reflects my political views, my station regularly plays such songs. It also (at least to me) seems to understand that I like humorous/odd lyrics. Perhaps the artists I like tend to have some view point in common, so it appears the program is matching lyrics. I just assumed it did. Or maybe one of your drives is related to HAL (joke).
However, since I found out about Pandora in February an excellent service has only improved. I cannot wait to see what you are doing in a year or a decade. (I'm thinking some sort of direct computer/brain interface disguised as ear phones.)

Jay - Happily waiting to see what you all do next.

Pandora does in fact take into account lyrical content; due to a quirk in the system that explanation doesn't always come up when you ask "why did you play this song", but the influence is always there. In fact, those "why playing" explanations are always just a small subset of factors at work.

Having said that, I'd be the first to admit that lyrics are a tricky problem. I'm sure we could devote hundreds of attributes to lyrics and still come up short in describing the full range of ideas and emotions that lyrics convey. We certainly pay attention to the lyrics in our analysis (and there are many attributes devotes to describing lyrical content), but the system isn't perfect.

Tom
CTO @ Pandora

Nice to know that lyrics are taken into account. Now how about a button that says "Love the music, vocals make me want to take a hammer to my headphones" somewhere?

Take Black Carbon Snow by Throes of Dawn for instance. Beautiful music... voice like fingernails on a chalkboard. If the vocals were even middling bearable, the song would be on my favorites list... as it is, it got a thumbs down. I love Pandora, listen to it every day, and this is probably the only annoyance I have left with the entire system. Everything else is wonderful.

Preview Edit: Can't link the text, so here's the song for reference.
http://www.pandora.com/music/song/7699d463d49fd648

Olá , a todos do Pandora!

O serviço de vocês é maravilhoso, parábens pela iniciativa, estou direto conectado, aqui no Brasil.

Abraço a todos

Newton Quintanilha

Rio de Janeiro city, Brasil

This is GREAT! Thank you for the free service!

Pandora is a fabulous service! I do have one recommendation, and I really don't see a place yet to make such comments, so I'll post it here in the hope that someone on staff may see it. You might consider some sort of compression or limiting to keep the levels in the same area. Some CD's are now mastered so much louder than others that when, say, a Peter, Paul & Mary track (such as "Autumn to May" is followed by a track from the recent Beatles Capital Series reissue ("Hold Me Tight") the jump in volume level can be quite startling, and in a work situation perhaps a little problematic.

This is a very minor problem, but it is something you might want to consider.

Thanks again for a great, great service.

I hope they don't add (normal, run-of-the-mill) compression-- it would severely affect the sound of many songs. Ideally they would just normalize each song so that its loudest part is some standard loudness level. This is not quite as easy as it sounds, for several reasons. One is that you can't just tell the loudness from the peak amplitude or energy level or something like that-- it takes some sophisticated math.

(Note for the non-techies: we're talking about dynamic compression, which makes the soft parts louder and the loud parts softer, and has nothing to do with bitrate compression.)

Another problem is that presumably the music is all stored at 128kbps, and to make any changes to the dynamics they would most likely have to uncompress (in the bit-rate sense) it, tweak the levels, and then recompress it, which would decrease the sound quality. To get good sound quality, they'd have to re-rip all the zillions of CDs that they've already ripped.

UNLESS they planned ahead and also have all the music stored uncompressed somewhere on a giant server. Hopefully this is the case because it would allow them to switch to a higher-quality codec in the future when more bandwidth is available. (Although to me 128kbps mp3 is generally good enough.)

Actually (thinking out loud here) one solution might be to automatically adjust the volume slider on the Pandora flash interface. Just have a single factor stored for each song to tell it how much to adjust. It seems a bit inelegant to me but it avoids having to change the stored music, and there could be an option to turn it off. Yeah, that's probably the best solution.

I am one that understands little of music except what I like (or, I like music that is different). I think that tracking and using knowledge from the users is a good idea, especialy since some of the "genes" may represent subjective measures.

The problem I would have is that there are songs that I like that a station plays that I don't give feedback for because it doesn't exemplify the station enough. If these songs disappeared from a station I would miss them, but the station would still function. The good thing is that the songs missing would not be one of those, and if I realy missed it I could plus it next time it came up.

I would like to say "This song is OK", only affecting a specific song or having a slight effect instead of fully altering the probabilitys. Don't know wich of those two would be best, you who know what's going on in the background can decide.

Oh, and I don't want my brother's choices to influence my station, he just downrates all the songs untill he finds the one he wants. He fails to see the true power of Pandora.

Overall, I am getting what I want. I cannot complain.

There needs to be a version for the PSP...

Thank you, thank you, I love Pandora, I just started listening to it yesterday, and I've been telleng all my coworkers about it I didn't know there was anything this cool out there, and for FREE, this is awesome.
Is there anyway to pick a complete CD, not just a song by an artist? I generally like to listen to the whole CD, rather than just a few songs by that artist. cd

Thank you so much! I LOVE your Musical Genome Project. I have shared your site with coworkers, friends and family. This is just terrific!
I have started several stations and I've been impressed with the breadth of your selections. The one area I haven't been able to find yet is Classical music. Is that coming soon?
Keep on Rockin'
Naomi

Can I buy shares in Pandora?

you guys provide a great service

I believe that if you used a rating scale of 1-10 that it would be more effective. I also think that if you are going to include certain people in setting up the program they should have a different log-in to rate for the general user rather than for themselves

Are there any plans to have a selectable bitrate stream?? 128kbs sounds pretty "ass-like". 160-192 is about the minimum you can get away with and have a fairly high quality sound. I LOVE pandora, but I wish it did not sound so crappy. :(

Great approach to solving that old problem of finding something similar to what I know I like. Thanks for taking this risks - still - to make this happen.

How is the 0-5 rating system used? For example, if "slap bass" were a gene would you give it a rating between 0 and 5 for every song? I can see zero meaning that there is no slap base on a song, but what would a 5 mean - the loudest slap bass, the best slap bass, etc.? It seems to me that most of the hundreds of genes are binary - they're either present or not, rather than present to some scalable degree. Can you please set me straight on the ratings and how they are assigned? Thanks again.

I have a question. I was wondering why pandora stops playing in the middle of a song and I am a registered user. I have been delaing with this now for over 3 weeks and I have not found a fix for it yet. Please help, a concerned lister

Please offer higher bitrate service, i will pay for it. It doesn't make sense to be partnered with logitechs great sound hardware when your streaming quality is so low, and many people will pay for higher data rates. I'd buy two squeezebox subscriptions for a 160k stream, four for a 192k stream...

I was interested in the word "genome" as used with the pandora studies and as curiousity would have it I studied into the word as to the relativity of the purpose of the statioin and I would like to be as helpful as possible, however, to conclude this study more effectively will most likely take many years to put a perspective on this due to the many opinions stated are the "truths" of the individual and conclude to be beyond the opposite of any match to me, which is perfectly normal, but suites it a bit comical to view the eye of the beholder as seeing themselves as "right" instead of unique in taste for to each it's own and to do a more invasive study as to pleasing the listener would have to have somewhat more communication. OK.. On a much, much lighter note and in simplistic measures. "Pandora is a great way to be introduced to a new -sounding taste test- And remember this is only a test :-)

Hi, just another comment commending the service. To the extent this is in the cards, I would enthusiastically welcome a higher bit-rate product (at a higher $ subscription rate).

Lastly, your service has led me to buy several CDs of artists I newly discovered on one of my stations (in case you still have to prove your business case to the labels).

Best regards.

I'm finding that Pandora stops playing midway through a song, and in most cases, it's after just a short period of listening. I'm connected via FIOS, no connectivity/streaming issues with any other site, and use FireFox 2.0.0.14 on OS X 10.5.2. Excellent service, but if it continually dies while playing, what good is it?

Just wanted to share my perspective and opinion here. After having been an XM subscriber for over 5 years, and listening to the very qualities and attributes that attracted me to XM satellite diminish through the years (mainly, the progressive station, "XM Music Lab" being excommunicated to only online, then banished all together, and the quality of "Deep Tracks'" deep cut playlist becoming increasingly boring), I relinquished my subscription all together, in lieu of discovering a bit more satisfying selection of music on the internet. I am an avid fan of progressive rock, growing up with the likes of Yes, King Crimson, ELO, Genesis, etc., and, after a Dogpile/Google search of "Progressive Rock", I was initially led and drawn to Live365. After absorbing them for a bit, I was about to subscribe to them when I remembered someone mentioning Pandora over a year ago, so I decided to check it out. I was a bit disappointed at the lack of diversity in the list of geners, and the absence of a "Prog Rock" selection. But, after becoming acclimated to the site and its features, I began to use Pandora to its fullest, creating first a "Kansas" station, hoping to hear mostly Kansas, Proto-Kaw, and the likes, but Kansas (the channels "namesake") was not repeated very often. Creating more stations founded on other favorite bands gave me increasing satisfaction and has won me over. The absence of the audio commercials of Live365, and the ability to enjoy and embrace moods and atmospheres of my choosing, rather, of my OWN CREATION, is next to euphoric! My only setback now is "portability" of my music, since I work construction and am either on a jobsite or on the road between jobs I need my music to be portable as I am mobile. I am not much of a "tech head" so i am researching and investigating any options available. I have considered the option of my phone, but am on T-Mobile, and so far I have not found a suitable "durable" phone I can use in my line of work.

I think this "project" you have endeavored is the most ingenious thing I have ever experienced, and look forward to it's journey of improvement from here on.

Thanks so much for your comment, Richard!
I'm thrilled to hear that you're enjoying Pandora.

And yes, we hope to continue improving! Let us know of any suggestions you have for us.

Thank you!

Lucia, from Pandora

I would like to know when you guys are going to have a pocket pc version of pandora.

Thanks!

Just updated my bb storm and now pandora stops about twenty seconds shy of each song then I have to restart after I listen to the sixth song. ;(. I miss my Pandora.