Pandora — for new music
Posted on May 10, 2006
Filed Under computers, music
I was talking with my mom last night about listening to music over the web, and I was telling her that I use a couple of websites to find new music. I don’t listen to the radio anymore (they just play such crap, pop stuff), so it can be hard to find new music, discover new bands, yada-yada. I get tired of listening to the same stuff, so I like to hear some new tunes every now and then.
I really like this website (Pandora) for finding new tunes. You enter the name of a band or song you like, and it plays either that song or something by that band first. Then it plays songs that the website’s database thinks are similar. You can give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to each song, and it gradually (in theory) gets a sense of what you like. It’s all couched in terms of building your own music station.
For example, I put in Miles Davis. It first played “All Blues,” from Kind of Blue. Score one for Pandora; that’s one of my favorites by the jazz giant. From there, it played “Grinning” by Hilmar Jensson — someone I’ve never heard of. I asked Pandora why it chose this song, and it replied “Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features trumpet head, unique instrumentation, and many other similarities identified in the music genome project.”
It’s free; if you register (also for free) you can record your preferences, and they will be stored and waiting for you when you come back to the site. It’s all streaming, so you have to be online to listen. You can’t download the songs directly, though there is usually a link to purchase the song through iTunes or the whole album containing that song through Amazon.
Anyone know of other sites like this or have other ways to find new music?
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