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I tried Zero 7 with Pandora, and when it said it was going to give me songs with jazz influence, rhythmic syncopation, a combination of electronic and acoustic instruments, etc., I assumed that it had given you a bunch of songs that had all the secondary characteristics of the music you asked for but none of the primary ones.  But when it started actually playing music, it was remarkable how many songs I would've believed were performed by Zero 7 if they told me so.

Morcheeba and TATU are a lot more similar, musically, than you're making them out to be :)  Try to compare them while ignore the lyrics and the personas of the performers.  I would've tried the bands you mentioned -- not to mention more of my own favorites -- but they wanted me to register.

I checked out a few Darediablo songs at their web site and I have to say they do have a fair similarity to Massive Attack.  They're hard rock rather than trip hop, but ... hell, actually, check out the opening of Skipping Rocks.  You can't safely chill to the song, but there are parts that are remarkably similar: http://www.darediablo.com/mp
3/Darediablo-SkippingRocks.mp3

Rhapsody also wants me to register.  Fuck you guys, I watched your ad, I'm not going to give you my personal information as well.

posted by jimNovember 13, 2005 at 13:41

Aqualung and Coldplay [ e ]

I tried Aqualung and Coldplay because I think they're kind of related (along with Radiohead, although Coldplay's latest sounds more like U2) and got some great results. I'm sick of iTunes and Napster's recommendation services which only seem to highlight popular artists that I know about already. And those services don't necessarily give you songs that are similar sounding -- most likely they use something like Amazon's system, "music lovers who like this also like..." That's a cool automated way to determine "artists in common" but it's always seemed too broad to me because people like a broad range of music and two artists enjoyed by the same people might have less in common musically. So I'm excited about Pandora. It's bringing up some more obscure bands that I wouldn't normally have discovered.

posted by DanChanNovember 13, 2005 at 22:57

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> Morcheeba and TATU

When I put Morcheeba in Rhapsody I got several groups that had the qualities that made Morcheeba feel different then stuff I had heard before.  The same qualities that made me like them.  When I put Morcheeba in Pandora I got lots of stuff that at least to my ears had nothing in common with Morcheeba (except both being music and both not being country or classical)

Same with Massive Attack.  Whatever features of Massive Attack that make me like them were present in the tracks that Rhapsody suggested but not present in the tracks that Pandora suggested.

I'm not comparing business models or registration issues, I'm only compairing the results of their matching ability.  So far Pandora has not matched well for me, Rhapsody has.  I agree that Amazon's system doesn't work.  As far as I can tell, Rhapsody's system works by paid music editors who mark similar bands.

I think the problem with Pandora is their matching system. They define Morcheeba as "basic rock structure, mild rhythmic syncopation, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, acoustic rhythm guitars".  That's not enough to distiguish Morcheeba from too many other bands that most fans of Morcheeba would not find similar.

Maybe this is one of those things Amazon should use their Mechanical Turk for.  Ask people to listen to 30 seconds of 2 songs and say if they are similar or different.  Something humans do well and so far computers don't.  I'm not sure that would help though because different people believe different things are similar.  For example someone might say all rock is the same and not be able to make the distinction between heavy metal, classic rock, industrial, etc.  It's those difference that would geneally only be understood by someone that's really into that genre so it seems like a place where experts are required.

I tried a few more.  Depeche Mode I got a few good matches.  Cibo Matto I got "Marta's Song" by Deep Forest, "Troubled Mind" by Everything But The Girl.  WTF?  I've though I liked Everything But The Girl I don't find either of those songs to have any of the qualities that made me like Cibo Matto.

posted by greggmanNovember 14, 2005 at 0:14

seems to work better for rock-ish kind of stuff... [ e ]

...as opposed to electronic/dance/sample/hip-hoppy genres.  Maybe the reviewers just haven't classified enough stuff in those areas yet...? Presumably, the system will continue to improve as they expand and refine their database.

I saw your link about Pandora right after I got back from seeing one of my favorite bands (Spoon) play, so I put them in first and ended up getting some excellent recommendations like Dan did.  I, too, am excited to see how the service progresses.

Overall, the Pandora approach definitely makes a lot more sense to me than the "people who bought this ALSO bought THIS" approach, since that method doesn't really work very well assuming that there are a lot of other people like me out there whose musical tastes are all over the place.  I like SOME music from just about any genre as long as it's well done and has those certain essential elements that somehow make it catchy or emotionally satisfying or whatever in the particular way that happens to click for me.  Similarly, there are artists like They Might Be Giants or Ween who tend to bounce around from style to style and are more difficult to categorize from album to album.  You could give musicians like that a room full of random junk to make noise with and they'd probably still be able to come up with something engaging and clever.

The Amazon style has its merits too, since it can help you to stumble across other stuff that is just intrisically "good" in some way or another, but the Pandora approach would seemingly make it easier to try to seek out music that fits a particular mood that you want to satiate.

posted by bionicroachNovember 14, 2005 at 12:05

heh [ e ]

You get bonus points for good use of "Super WTF!"

posted by bwanaNovember 22, 2005 at 23:40

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Pandora Works Great with Punk Rock. I put in one Fat Wreck chords and it pretty much then went down the list of other fat wreck bands along withs some other bands I hadnt heard of but certainly seemed the same. Of course with melo-core Punk Rock music, it's kinda hard to go wrong on finding musical likeness.

posted by MrDanNovember 25, 2005 at 23:31

last.fm [ e ]

You should try http://www.last.fm, which used to be audioscrobbler.  Similar tracks are marked up by the users who 'tag' tracks, into genres etc, the last.fm player then uses these tags to find music for you.  It also uses the Audioscrobbler plugin for Winamp/iTunes etc. to record all the music you listen to, then gives you charts and stats about you: (http://www.last.fm/user/radi
oxfish/).

If you pay you can then listen to 'your' radio station, where it picks based on your listening history.  you can join groups of ppl and listen to the group radio, or the radio stations of people who listen to similar music to you.

In case you cant tell, I quite like it:)

posted by ChrisNovember 28, 2005 at 6:21

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I tried Pandora a few days ago and I like it. I first tried it by entering the band name "Combichrist", a rather obscure industrial band (on the "terror ebm" side of the genre). It did a pretty good job of playing me other "EBM" bands like Novakill, Funker Vogt, and NeuroticFish. It also threw in a few trancey-dancey tracks that were ok but nothing special (certainly far from the "Combichrist" sound).

The simple interface really got me thinking about how it works. First does it "learn" based on my input, or does it simply just discard tracks I mark as "I don't like it"?

Second, if it does indeed learn, then how does my input affect the choice of tracks it will add next? For example what if a track being played is completely way off in terms of the genre/style that it should be, but ends up being a track I like? If I click "I like it" will that skew my station off on another tangent, far from the original requested band/song? If I click "I don't like it" (but really I do) does that affect other 'stations' I've created where that track would be more appropriate?

I'm Over analyzing....

posted by RayBDecember 3, 2005 at 2:58

My Follow-up [ e ]

OK So I must have had good luck on my first listen because ever since, Pandora likes to play lots of really unrelated types of music. Oh well. That's what the "skip" button is for.

posted by RayBDecember 8, 2005 at 18:22

Viva Pandora [ e ]

I have been playing with Pandora for several weeks, and have made about a dozen stations.  It sometimes veers down the wrong "path", but in general I think it is the most useful music discovery tool available, and not by a small margin.  last.fm is also fairly cool, but I have discovered far more great new music through Pandora.  Personally, I can tolerate a few misses if some truly great music dicovery moments happen.

posted by peterZGDecember 9, 2005 at 2:11

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I checked out Pandora after reading this blog. Its awesome.

posted by victorDecember 9, 2005 at 4:30

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> I think it is the most useful music discovery tool available, and not by a small margin.

Actually, as a music discovery tool it's not all that good compared to Rhapsody (and probably Napster and Yahoo Music as well).  On Rhapsody I can choose from 1.5 million songs.  I'm listening to Jack Johnson, It recommends G.Love and Special Sauce, The Wallflowers, Tim Blum and several others.  Listening to Massive Attack it recommends Portishead, Hooverphonic and 4 other bands as contemporaries.  Everything But the Girl, Halou and Lamb ans followers and 4 more bands as related projects but the big difference is I don't have to wait for them to appear on the radio.  I can listen to full CDs of each of those artists immediately and each those artists will in turn lead to more recommendations.

Even in radio mode each artist has a link leading to info about them, related bands and you can immediately play CDs worth of music from each band.

posted by greggmanDecember 9, 2005 at 12:07

I Second Last.fm. [ e ]

Fee or free, Last.fm very nice. Lots of new great music to be discovered. You can listen to music based on similar artists, your own neighbours (people with similar tastes), groups you may join, or your own radio -once you give them some money. Nice people there too.

posted by ADecember 12, 2005 at 15:32