Thursday, July 24, 2008

Pandora

Here at my new job I've been introduced to Pandora Radio. I find it very interesting, especially with its ties to the Music Genome Project. It is very nice to have something to listen to at work, especially with the variety of music available.

The timing of this find matched up with the new iPhone update which brought the new 3rd-party apps. I haven't really used the iPhone app much, but it seems to work pretty well even over the EDGE network. But the coincidence of timing piqued my interest in the service.

I really like the idea of finding new music by matching qualities with songs or artists which you like. I rarely listen to traditional radio because they play so much junk that I don't enjoy (and that's not to even start talking about commercials). But on Pandora I can control the experience enough to get music that I like.

Of course, playing music that I own on my iPod trumps Pandora overall because I have full control. But then I'm not finding new music.

Now I just need a way to find / review movies and games in a similar way. It's a little bit like what you see on online stores: "People who bought what you bought also bought these things you might like." But the power here is that you aren't just limited to one (well, maybe a few) variables to compare against.

It makes me wonder what kind of algorithms they use to create the playlists...