Launch of the Friends and Family Preview: Day One

by on July 17, 2005

This is an incredibly exciting and proud moment for me, and I hope for everyone who played a part helping Pandora get here. The Music Genome Project is off on its maiden voyage!
This is a product born of a passion and respect for music, and for those who create it. It is truly a collective creation of so much musical talent, from individuals too numerous to mention. There are players who’ve shared the stage with Charles Mingus, Steve Miller, the Grateful Dead, Public Enemy, and Sheryl Crow; musicology PhD’s with published orchestral works; high school teachers; and independent musicians of all stripes who’ve ploughed the interstates in vans full of gear. There are guitarists, drummers, singers, fiddle players, bassists, piano players, rappers, DJs, saxophonists, trombonists, trumpet players, flutists, percussionists, even someone who spent a year in a barn writing a concerto for two pipe organs!
I hope that as you use Pandora you will feel and hear this passion. Each song in the Genome has been carefully, dare I say lovingly studied. 15-30 minutes spent on each composition capturing the hundreds of musical nuances that give each song its unique sound. From the big name artists to the most indie of the indies… It’s not perfect, how could it be… but we’ve put everything we have into it.
Enjoy.

Comments

  1. marco
    July 27, 2005 at 8:11pm
    Really neat service, I've already found additional stuff I'll buy. Any way I would be able to get this to stream from Itunes?
    Reply
  2. Larry Kloss
    July 29, 2005 at 12:24pm
    What an absolutely magnificent concept. When I first heard the NPR piece on the Music Genome Project I knew I wanted to be a part of it. There are few discoveries more exciting than finding a new artist whose work you can really get next to. Pandora looks like the ideal way to make those discoveries and to get introduced to all the hard work that's gone into the Genome Project. Having said that, I have a couple of suggestions. (1) Would it be too complicated to have the duration of each song displayed along with a running timer to give a person an idea of how much longer a particular song will last? (2) Here in Ann Arbor, the heart of AMG country, we rely on the All Music Guide for info on just about any kind of music. One drawback of Pandora is that you get very little info on the artist or album; it'd be great if you could click on a link in Pandora and be transported to the corresponding album's page over at the AMG. Those are just a couple suggestions. I am absolutely blown away by the effort you folks have put into this! I'll be subscribing as soon as my free trial period ends.
    Reply
  3. Larry Kloss
    July 29, 2005 at 12:50pm
    WinAmp has a really nice feature you can select where the name of the artist and song that are currently playing scrolls along the WinAmp taskbar tab. Any chance of a similar feature for Pandora? Just wondering.
    Reply
  4. Lillian
    August 03, 2005 at 1:00pm
    I think the idea is great, but I agree with the others that just a short idea of who the new artist is (like a tag on a museum painting) would be helpful so we can go on listening without opening up a lot of other windows, etc. Much better if people are listening in the office as well as at home etc.
    Reply
  5. Dave Allan
    September 04, 2005 at 2:57pm
    All I was say is "wow". This is awsome, the amount of times i've been trying to find similar stuff, and found it more luck than anything. I read somewhere "this is a reason for the internet". Well, this is like the Google of the music industry. It finds exactly what you want. It's this sort of service that really makes you realise how rubbish everything has been before it! Anyway, my idea: create an online database like CDDB that you could download local or use online from mirrors, that can take your playlist, and allow you to select a "mood" your in. Then your software will make winamp play music for whatever mood your in. Like a clever dynamic playlist. Rather than finding artists you might not have, it finds artists you DO have, and plays them depending if they fit your mood. Now THAT would be cool.
    Reply
  6. camellin
    December 20, 2005 at 8:18pm
    good service.
    Reply
  7. Richard Hall
    March 18, 2006 at 4:20pm
    I think the scrolling song name would only work if you can get browser windows to do that. I would agree that it would be nice to have something external to the web, i mean the web player is great for beginners, and probally should remain, but for more experienced listeners, or more savy people, perhaps something standalone would be much better (winamp compatable?). I do like shoutcasts because of their compatability with winamp, and do not use other streaming music sources because i couldn't use it with winamp. I choose to use pandora because it is good, and offers a variety that other streams can't, plus I can skip songs (and rate thumbs down) songs i don't like Long story short, Great service, keep up the good work, and i'm sure this is going to continue to grow!
    Reply

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