Saving my office, one computer at a time!

Allow me to introduce the most vital member of my office team: Pandora. If I had to sum up Pandora in one word it would be: scrumtralecent. If I had to sum up Pandora in 4 words they would be: selflessly devoted to me. There is no one in our office who would go to the lengths that Pandora does to assure that I have a stress-free work environment. Pandora reaches to the ends of the Earth, finding fresh new music for me. Never, ever does Pandora grow weary; never, ever does Pandora complain; never, ever does Pandora stop.

********NERD ALERT NERD ALERT NERD ALERT********
********What your about to read has been known to ********
********contain high amounts of nerdiness********



Okay, so what's Pandora and why is it so great? Well, my friends, I'm about to drop some serious knowledge on all y'all. Pandora is internet radio based on the Music Genome Project. Like most other internet radio stations and programs like iTunes, Pandora is a suggestive system. You tell it an artist or song you like and it will play music it believes you will like. How it arrives at these decisions is what makes Pandora stand head and shoulders above the rest.

iTunes, Yahoo Radio, Amazon, and the rest all make suggestions based on what other listeners listen to/bought. Say you preordered Hannah Montana's new album and a reissue of the original NKOTB album, these programs will suggest Hannah (that's right, we're on a first name basis,) to someone who buys NKOTB.

Pandora is quite different. Rather than comparing trends, Pandora relies on the Music Genome Project. In short, this project is an attempt to distill the essence of music. Not in some new-aged essence of a rainbow way. The Project has defined over 400 musical attributes (tonality, rhythmic pulse, instrumentation) and created an intense mathematical algorithm to organize them all. It will make obvious connections, say the Cardigans, No Doubt, and Lily Allen. How about Club 8? Who? Coldplay? What (okay, maybe Mr. Martin does sound a wee bit like a girl at time)? Not only does the algorithm take into account musical characteristics, it will also discern lyrical content.

How are these attributes discerned, you ask. Great question. At this time, Pandora employs listeners to classify music. They will generally give each new song 20-30 minutes and create a laundry list of characteristics with which to categorize the music. The next step, however, is to create a software system that will analyze digital music and create these lists themselves. Efforts to this end are based largely on the MP3 codec (I could wax on for days on this topic, I'll spare you my ultra-nerd diatribe), which uses programs to determine what parts of a music file you can live without.

The main problem with comparative systems is: they cannot find you anything new. If no one who bought the Tom Waits also bought Serge Gainsbourg, you'd have no idea that they're related. Pandora picks music based on music.

Well, thanks for staying with me. I'll make the next one more enjoyable for the non-nerds out there. Here's a little something for your effort: Odontophobia is the fear of teeth.