Pandora

Pandora Radio is a free personalized radio in which users can listen to music with similar musical attributes (rhythm syncopation, key tonality, vocal harmonies, etc). Pandora's mission is to "play music that the user loves". The site started in 2000 and music analysts have continued to develop methods of playing songs that have similar qualities.

Pandora has caught in the public domain and currently has more than one million users. It has also become one of the best applications for streaming music on the iPhone.

Pandora official logo.

How Pandora Works

The user is able to input a song or artist of their choice, which Pandora uses to create a station that plays similar music. Users can to create different stations for varied musical interests. By utilizing "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" buttons, Pandora is able to better tailor the music it plays to meet your interests. As Pandora learns more about what you like and dislike, it updates your station accordingly - for example, thumbing down two songs by an artist will ban that artist from your station (preventing other songs from the artist from playing on the station in the future).

Pandora also allows users to add artists or add songs to existing stations in order to give stations more diversity in music.

Music Genome Project

The Music Genome Project is an essential part of how Pandora became the successful application that it is. The Music Genome Project is said to be "the most sophisticated taxonomy of musical information ever collected"; it has taken millions of songs and sorted them into different radio stations based on similarity.

In order to categorize songs, an analyst examines one each song based on 450 musical characteristics. Analysts for the Music Genome Project aren't just ordinary musicians; they are required to have certain training and certain understandings about how to identify the characteristics of a song. The Music Genome Project's database uses "precisely defined terminology, a consistent frame of reference, redundant analysis, and ongoing quality control". Pandora puts a great deal of time and energy into being as thorough as possible with each individual song.

Due to its thoroughness and accurateness, the Music Genome Project has been essential to Pandora's success.

Tranditional vs. Web Radio Services

Traditional radio plays the same songs for all users listening at any given time, which means it lacks the uniqueness and individuality that Pandora offers. However, traditional radio stations do not have to pay a fee each time they play a song. With 40,000 new customers a day plus a base of over one million who already use the site, this adds up. In 2010, Pandora estimated their cost for playing music to be over $17 million, which is significantly more than the company generates in revenue from ads. Because of the increasing cost to stream songs online, Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, recently announced that they may have to pull the plug on Pandora.