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May 11, 2009
How Pandora's music recommendations work (sort of)
Here's an animated flight of fancy which dives into the connections between different musical acts on Pandora. This isn't REALLY how our recommendations work in the Music Genome Project, but instead shows what you might run into if you expand your stations and start exploring. For instance...
... how Coldplay might lead you to Mozart, by way of yodeling and American patriotic music ...
... the paths that run from Kanye West to Willie Nelson, which include German motorik rock ...
... musicians who might accompany a duet between Jack Johnson and Whitney Houston, such as the Rolling Stones and a Hawaiian slack-key guitarist ...
... the six degrees that separate the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Miles Davis, which include Cyndi Lauper and Ice Cube.
Posted by Kevin Seal at May 11, 2009 11:51 AM
Comments
I defragged my computer and now I have lost all of my saved directories of favorite artists. When I try to login it keeps saying Pandora keeps sending back an error message that my email was entered incorrectly. Then when I click on "lost my password" it says that my email is already on file and won't let me have access again. I love this site and like to have it playing in the background all day while I work. Can anyone out there help?
Posted by: morgan at May 12, 2009 07:39 AM
These are awesome! I watched them all. ^^ The videos sort of remind me of exploring wikipedia... you never *where* you'll end up.
Posted by: kagitsune at May 12, 2009 09:03 PM
Pandora is the bomb !!! I love it. Keep it pumping!!!
Posted by: William at May 13, 2009 03:57 AM
Amazing station!!! I love the bands like U.N.K.L.E. which is who I put in originally. You guys keep it up, just like you are!!
Luv it!!
Debbie
Posted by: Debbie at May 13, 2009 06:33 AM
Feature Request:
Make it so I can add thumbed up/down songs to my station via Station/Options/Edit. It would help me train Pandora faster.
Posted by: ethicalhacker at May 13, 2009 10:12 AM
@morgan That's because you "borrow" music.
@kagitsune You never end up where you started. It used to be called surfing the web.
@ethicalhacker we don't need training.
How does Pandora work? It analyzes data in waves, bits and bytes and compares them to other sounds/songs/music/noise and gives you a next song that is a smooth transition, or preferably a resonance, of the previous song, like DNA.
Posted by: Mark at May 13, 2009 12:10 PM
This is FANTASTIC! I was just writing about how Pandora does this, and this totally captured the essence of the path to music discovery. Brilliant!
Posted by: Rathan Haran at May 13, 2009 02:25 PM
This is FANTASTIC! A visual representation of how Pandora helps in music discovery. I was just writing about how this all works, and it was pretty sweet to see this put together. Nice job team Pandora.
Posted by: Rathan Haran at May 13, 2009 02:29 PM
This is a feature suggestion. I am sometimes so focused on what I'm doing, that I can't take the time to do thumbs up and down, and in that case, I like predictability. But sometimes I'm just goofing around, and I have lots of attention to evaluate unpredictable songs.
I think it would be really cool if I had a little slider for Pandora that slides from predictable to adventuresome. This way, when I have a lot of attention to spare, I can expand the range of my stations, but when I'm focused elsewhere, I can avoid annoying music.
I also think that it would be wonderful if I could vote on a song more than once. That way, if I really loved one of the songs, I'd vote for it a lot, and Pandora would know what types of musical DNA that I'd like the best of all.
Posted by: Cougar Brenneman at May 13, 2009 10:59 PM
Jus tlove pandora wonder what would i do without it. Watching all the videos feature is awesome.
Posted by: Jim Scott at May 14, 2009 12:01 AM
Thanks Pandora for this good news. I love music!
Posted by: Joy Ng at May 14, 2009 03:48 AM
I just wanted to thank everyone who has made Pandora possible. I love being able to create a station. It is a dream come true - and being in a cube environment 11 hours a day is now tolerable.
thank you.
Posted by: Kathleen at May 14, 2009 08:50 AM
Wow Pandora...this music rocks me. Thanks
Posted by: TLorenzMG at May 15, 2009 12:50 AM
Thanks again Pandora. Music is my life. And this one is really great!
Posted by: Patrick at May 16, 2009 02:31 AM
Thanks guys, as ever you rock!
Posted by: Patrick Ferlang at May 16, 2009 03:13 AM
Pandora is awesome! Keeps me rockin! Cheers
Posted by: Deebot at May 18, 2009 06:04 AM
Great way to bring back the love for country music. But Im here in Costa Rica listening to salsa. I miss home.
Posted by: JML at May 18, 2009 09:32 AM
Hi. I just started listening to Pandora recently. A co-worker told me about it, although I normally listen to my own internet station on Live365. ("Not Too Smooth Jazz" is the name of my station, at www.live365.com/stations/smjzzfan.)
Anyway, my question is...can someone request artists to be added to the Genome Project? So far, a few artists I've tried to add (who I feature on my own station) are not in your "library", if you will. A particularly awesome example is David Boswell, whose music sounds quite similar to the style of Pat Metheny (who IS included in your "library".)
Do you add artists at the request of listeners?
Thanks!
Donna Savoy
Posted by: Donna Savoy at May 18, 2009 10:05 AM
a manual thumbdown is more important as a preventive measure, rather than training.
Posted by: Roman at May 19, 2009 02:16 AM
Thanks guys for the information, just real addicted to pandora and love the music.
Posted by: Nanny at May 19, 2009 03:17 AM
pandora does have some great music recomendations but i wish some of that licensing stuff could be sorted out as it gets frustrating when you cant listen to one of the tracks that listened to before.
Posted by: steveh at May 19, 2009 03:39 AM
PAndora relaly rocks and this music collection was awesome.
Posted by: SC at May 20, 2009 04:15 AM
Wow pandora
That is interesting and the music rock my world
thanks
Posted by: Paul Duncan at May 20, 2009 10:20 AM
Really interesting post. It's nice to have a "sneak peak" of how this system works ;)
Keep up with the good work guys.
Darren,
Posted by: Darren at May 26, 2009 04:29 PM
Dear Tim, I wish you would put the entire Concord Jazz library on your sight. There is a lot of great stuff there. ( I am Cal Collins' widow, so of course I would like the universe to have access to his 28 recordings on their stuff, both as a leader and as part of the Concord Super Band, and as a sideman with R
osemary Clooney, Scott Hamilton, Warren Vache, etc.) Hope my computer skills are enough to get this posted - 2nd try. I play on your sight regularly, and wish I could turn other listeners on to Cal.
Posted by: susie collins at May 28, 2009 11:48 PM
thank you for providing info.i really love having you guys on pandora
Posted by: California DUI at May 29, 2009 05:46 AM
Come on Tim... get the Concord Jazz library into your book. I'm not the only one who would like it.
Posted by: susie collins at May 30, 2009 12:31 AM
How about Pandora for G1 Phone???
WE WANT PANDORA FOR G1, PLEASE!
Google Phone + Pandora = BEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD!!!
Posted by: luki and friends at June 1, 2009 04:30 PM
Nice mastrkraft picture.. have you seen that video.. epic
Posted by: RaaH at June 2, 2009 01:02 AM
Just have to love the net, sitting here working while listening online, better than the local radio stations as they are mostly pretty naff, unlike Pandora
Posted by: Web Design In Spain at June 3, 2009 05:48 AM
I have no rap stations for then you must not play that rap crap an they are right we (they)don't like them let alone love Dem poor little Gangsta Boo he say they don't love me he's right it's trash Boo Boo
Posted by: bill at June 4, 2009 12:43 PM
please quit playing the same songs over & over & over
Posted by: chris at June 5, 2009 10:47 AM