2. Pandora is created by The Music Genome Project,
which got its start on January 6, 2000.
It was created by Tim Westergren, a graduate from
Stanford University, as well as by Jon Kraft and
Will Glaser.
Tim Westergren
http://emusician.com/tutorials/712mbi_fig1.jpg
3. Once you are registered to Pandora.com, choose an
artist or song you like.
The site will then create a playlist of songs similar to
the artist type or song you chose.
When it plays a song, it tells you the artist, song, and
album, and it also shows the album cover.
It gives you the option to give the song a rating of a
“thumbs down” or “thumbs up”
Thumbs down will make the playlist skip to the
next song. It will also never play that song again
and eliminate the remaining songs similar to it.
Thumbs up lets Pandora know that you like this
song and want them to play more songs like it.
4. Pandora knows people like multiple kinds of music, so
you can chose additional stations to create.
Once you’ve created various stations, you can select
“QuickMix.” In this, you select the playlists you want to
combine and shuffle. This way you can listen to all the
music you want together.
5. The many employees of Pandora spend half and hour analyzing
each song before it goes onto the site.
Each song is “represented by a vector.” These contain genes that
classify each of the songs. Depending on the genre of music, it can
have a range of 150-500 genes. The genes reflect characteristics of
that song.
“…everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration,
arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's
not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about
who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.” (Tim
Westergren, pandora.com)
6. Pandora is a free service to use. They make their
money through advertisements, mostly for cell phones
and fast food restaurants.
(All photos from pandora.com)
7. However, you do have the option of paying a $36 annual fee. This gives
you the opportunity to use the application on your Sprint phones, and
you can get a player from Sonos or Logitech that you can use in your
home away from your computer. It will also play the music without any
ads included.
Drawbacks? On a radio station, you are limited to only skipping 5 songs
an hour. This includes giving a song a “thumbs down” rating and having
it be skipped. You can still give songs a “thumbs down” rating after the 5
skips, but it continues playing that song anyway. Once you’ve reached
the 5 skips though, it recommends that you try another station. It
continues learning what you like and don’t like.
Users contribute to Pandora by creating hacks to allow users to select
whatever song they want to listen to.
8.
9. Pandora is very simple to start
using thanks to a neat, efficient
appearance. The registration
Using Pandora
process doesn’t ask for a lot of
information about you and
there’s no email confirmation
(which for some is a big plus
since it saves time).
Once you are registered you’re
taken immediately to a page
where you can select the artist,
song, or composer that will
generate the rest of the playlist
for you.
10.
11.
12. User positioning
Data driven
Cost-effective scalability
Contains podcasts
Extends out to Facebook
Broadens past your PC
Can be used without a web browser
13. The user can control the music they listen to whether they register or not.
It allows the user to choose songs, artists, or radio stations they would enjoy
listening to and saves (bookmarks) their favorite artists, songs, or radio stations.
Just as well, users can share their profile with other users and invite others to use
Pandora .
Pandora runs on a database filled with different musical artists, songs, and radio
stations.
15. Pandora is not only an internet radio, but it also has podcasts.
Pandora Podcast is a musicology show that is hosted by Kevin Seal of the
band Griddle.
The podcast goes into describing the detail and amount of work that goes
into making music.
It is updated weekly, and each show focuses on different musical topics and
also include special guests.
16.
17.
18. Video
Pictures from ilike.com, last.fm, ruckus.com, live365.com, napster.com, and
http://blogs.sun.com/plamere/entry/what_is_the_itunes_genius
19. Bibliography
Kayne, R. quot;What is the Music Genome Project?quot;
WiseGEEK. <http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-
music-genome-project.htm>.
quot;Music Genome Project.quot; Wikipedia.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/music_genome_project>.
quot;Pandora (music service).quot; Wikipedia.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pandora_(music_service)>.
Pandora Radio. <http://www.pandora.com/>
Westergren, Tim. quot;The Music Genome Project.quot; Pandora
Radio. <http://www.pandora.com/mgp.shtml>.