My Genetic Music Make-up

You can tell how people are by looking at their bookcase, and the books that they keep. I guess the same goes for music as well. if you went into my CD collection you'd find rock music, pop music, trance music, rap music, music by bands, music by solo artists, music that's funny, music that's somber, up-tempo music, and so-on. It's all over the place, so one could say I have no discerning taste in music.

Now the Music Genome Project is a nice initiative to collect information about music, and identifying as many attributes as needed to find a common thread. These attributes could be something like vocal harmony, melodic phrashing, or key tonality. If you get all these together every track reads off its unique combination of characteristics, like a human genome. Hence the name.

Pandora Internet Radio is based on this Music Genome Project. Now the thing is, if you provide Pandora a sampling of music you like, it will find similar music in its growing database of music. And it's really good too. Even if you provide just a couple of tracks you like, that's enough information to get introduced to music you've never heard of before, but will likely like very much. Thing is, the common thread is not genre, or artist; it's going to be based on all these attributes identified and rated. It makes up for some initially weird combinations, that actually work well.

Anyway, try it out for yourself. Sign-up, submit some music you like, or grab one of my stations to see what I'm listening to (as anniversary bonus they are listed on the right); see for yourself what your music taste is really like. Be warned: Broadband internet connection is kinda necessary...