RSSPandora Sees the DNA in Digital Music
By Ed Oswald | Published February 1, 2006, 7:24 PM
Although we may not realize it, our musical preferences can be easily analyzed. Whether it's the soothing sounds of Enya or the guitar of heavy metal, an Oakland, California-based company thinks it knows how to figure out what you like, and in turn expose you to new music based on these tastes.
Enter the Music Genome Project, a six-year initiative undertaken by Pandora Media. A team of thirty musical analysts makes up the core of this effort, and they have listened to hundreds of thousands of songs from over 15,000 artists, individually analyzing each on some 400 distinct musical attributes.
While some music services have dabbled in personalization and recommendations, those are usually based on the purchasing habits of someone else, who may not necessarily have the same tastes in music as you do.
Instead, Pandora says the service is driven by the listener's own musical preferences, and these attributes, or 'genes' as the company calls them, helps decipher what that person likes to hear.
"The best way to think of it is as primary colors," Pandora's Chief Strategy Officer and founder Time Westergren told BetaNews in a recent interview. For example, voice has 30 attributes, each a different aspect of that subject, including bravado, range, ornamentation, pitch, and tamber among others.
The company has been licensing the technology behind the Music Genome Project since shortly after its launch in December 1999. However, the consumer product has only been in existence for several months.
Pandora's online service takes the concept of Internet radio one step further. Whereas current offerings only allow the listener to hear what the DJ has programmed, the technology behind the Music Genome Project gives the user full control.
"When you enter an artist or song in Pandora, we use that song's 'DNA' as a guide on how to sequence songs for you," Westergren explained. The playlist is then streamed to the user. From there, the listener can give a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" -- much like TiVo -- to tell the service if its playing the right songs.
As the user does this, the playlist will change based on his or her affinity for some number of 'genes.' "If you give thumbs up to eight songs in a row with a female vocalist, we think 'okay, he's probably liking the female vocal,' so your playlist will skew in that direction," Westergren added.
Westergren said that many times you may not know exactly why you dislike a song, but the Music Genome Project can help explain it.
"You may not realize it, but you don't like chromatic harmony," he said. "You may have no idea what that means, but we see you don't like anything that has it." Thus, your playlist would not include anything including that gene.
A user can create as many "channels" as they'd like, each based off that initial song or artist. However, the service cannot play a song or artist on demand due to the webcasting laws within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
It is also due to the DMCA that a user can only skip so many songs in a hour, but this keeps costs down for the service, which currently relies on a small but growing subscriber base and venture capitalists to keep it going. Banner ads also keep the site afloat, and traditional digital music service iTunes has bought Pandora's entire ad stock in the near term.
Those who do not have a paying subscription with the service, which costs $12 for three months or $36 annually, will see the banner ads. Pandora had always intended to offer a free service, but did not do so initially.
"When we launched the paid-only [in October] we had sort of an ocean of new users that would cycle off that we said we just couldn't wait," he explained.
The 'ocean' of users that Westergren talks about did not come through advertising. He said all referrals to the Music Genome Project have come through word of mouth. Pandora has also received some press, but that has come from reporters running into the product in their own lives.
In turn, a focus of the company has been to urge users to share their Pandora channels, and the company has endeavored to make it easy to do so.
The service is only available through the Web right now, however Westergren said the company's long-term vision includes taking it to other platforms. Over the next one to two years Pandora plans software and mobility options that would allow a subscriber to take their channels with them on smart phones and MP3 players.
"There's no limit to what we'll try to do in order to make this ubiquitous," he said. In the end, however, the user will decide where the company takes the product.
"Our users have lots to say about the service," Westergren remarked. "We're using their opinions to figure out what to do next."
My tastes range from Iris Dement to Cecelia Bartoli to the Rolling Stones to Beyonce to (ol'skool) Public Enemy, but I've been freaking amazed at Yahoo Music Engine's ability to analyze my preferences and almost invariably dish out things I very much enjoy, but have not yet heard. I say this only to affirm that is indeed very easy for some algorithms to accurately determine our preferences. (And I guess it is sorta a plug for YME. But hey, I like it.)
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Steve, surely the scores would average out, rather than add together, to obtain a bias rather than a score. To do this though you might need a record of how many times you had made a choice.
so using your example, assuming you had voted once to achieve the following:
f=0, m=10
and the current music is
f=10, m=10
selecting Yes would make it
f=5, m=10
and No would make it
f=0, m=5
Neat idea for software though, someone's trying to do something similar for identifying food too, but less PC based.
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Very good :-)
But...
if the tracks have a number of categorys and values (like female=10, male=10 for a female + male vocals) then actually displaying these values and being able to 'tweak' what the user actually wants.
so if your current preference was
f=0, m=10
and the current music has a value
f=10, m=10
then selecting yes would equal
f=10, m=20
and selecting no would equal
f=-10, m=0
I started with Enya and kepts getting heavy beat dance stuff - I would have liked to say NO to any 'beat'
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Very commendable project, Kudos. But very much still a work in progress.
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cooool, now i just leave this streaming over night and transfer the access mp3s to my walkman in the morning! have cool new music to listen to:-) only downside though is there are no tags, and that its 128kbps, but its still my new legal best friend, listen to this to find new music, use TPB to download it via BT.
part from that they dont seem to check the zip, i just wrote 20024(i think thats d.c.) and i live in sweden. how on earth could the ip match? lol
edit: can someone make a app that recognizes the song and renames the corresponding access file accordingly.
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"but its still my new legal best friend"
not too sure about that. I mean, for you, yes....for Pandora...? Maybe not so much.
Hopefully they'll fix this little hole soon. I'd hate to see the RIAA put the smack-down on these guys.
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as mutch as i like this little hole, i have to agree, better they patch it up or it might get messy (damn, damn the RIAA!).
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Hole's been there for months ;)
Out of thousands I've listen to, 120 great songs were added to my MP3 collection in last few months and counting ;)
The absolute best of those select few, which I would have never heard w/o Pandora:
Albert Hammond - If You Gotta Break Another Heart
Apoptygma Berzerk - Nearer
Daniel G Harmann - Words
Frou Frou - Hear Me Out
George Harrison - Stuck Inside a Cloud
James Blunt - You're Beautiful
Mark Eitzel - Sleeping Beauty
Melpo Mene - Hello Benjamin***
Nanook of the North - Forget it Jenny, love is just a privilege for the rich***
Oslo - My Soul
Phantom Planet - 1st Things 1st
Spain - Before It All Went Wrong
The Dandy Warhols - The Last High
The Firebird Band - Gift***
Travis - Pipe Dream
I would also recommend last.fm and launch.yahoo.com
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Can someone please make an app that will use the song and title from the browser window to rename the access songs accordingly?
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i dont like launch.yahoo, it was good, but then i removed wmp, and since launch requires wmp, its on my not cool list,
as for last.fm ive only used it to search similar artists.
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An easier way to get there:
Start-->Run-->
then type:
%temp%
Enjoy!
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Very Cool!
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Er...wow, guys.
Mod this down, nate.
Apparently, the files played are MP3 files.
Go to C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Temp\plugtmp (or plugtmp-1...etc)
rename any of the "access" files in there putting an mp3 extension on them.
Whallah. A 128kbit full-length MP3 for each song you have listened to.
Frankly, I'm amazed they aren't metatagged. :P
Wow. And the RIAA is allowing this service to exist? For free?
Thank God 128K sucks. It's barely good enough for radio. Hopefully most people who figure this out will still buy the music for better quality playback.
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I don't see anything under temp like that? This is for Pandora?
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C:\Documents and Settings\(Your username)\Local Settings\Temp
Yes, pandora.
In that dir will be foldder like;
plugtmp
plugtmp-1
plugtmp-2
etc...
Within one of these (usually the last numbered one) are a bunch of numbered files starting with the word, "access". Add the .mp3 extentsion to these files and they will be playable in winamp/foobar/wmp/etc...
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That's very odd... I don't have it.
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me neither wat OS was it working on guys? ...This could be fun.
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Windows XP SP2
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Tested it again. Still works.
Make sure windows isn't hiding them from you. (Tools - Folder Options - View - Show Hidden Files And Folders)
Current Directory mine are dropping into:
Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\PhoenixPath\Local Settings\Temp\plugtmp-3
02/03/2006 10:32 PM .
02/03/2006 10:32 PM ..
02/03/2006 10:29 PM 3,522,559 access
02/03/2006 10:29 PM 2,931,146 access-1
02/03/2006 10:32 PM 0 dir.list
02/03/2006 10:28 PM 513,420 tuner_6_7_0_0.swf
02/03/2006 10:28 PM 1,025 v3
5 File(s) 6,968,150 bytes
2 Dir(s) 76,110,209,024 bytes free
access and access-1 files, when renamed to access.mp3 and access-1.mp3 are 128kbit MP3 files, dropped in there by Pandora.
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yep ive searched that directory, as well as all temp directories, with hidden files showing etc....i don't have "access" file names or a "plugtmp" folder, winXPsp2...I don't even have large temp files. .....this pisses me off...any suggestions..is it a setting I have for caching perhaps?
EDIT: I thought i found the issue: macromedia was set to only allow 100kb of data to be stored on my computer per site. i changed that but still not working. any ideas? what version are you using?
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Just a confirmation...yes, they are there.
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wow... good find. Damn you for turning the internet crack into internet heroin! Dare i say, you've opened pandora's box?
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No need to go hunting around. Do this:
Start-->Run-->
then type:
%temp%
Enjoy!
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i know how to do it, but the files r not being saved...pandora is open, yet the files r not being cached. any ideas? ....must be a setting somewhere
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Try using a different browser. If you use Flock, the files are in that directory. If you use IE7 or Firefox, they won't show (at least on my system).
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IE6...should b fine ugh...maybe ill boot up my win98 pII laptop lol, and just copy music off of it.
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I'm using Firefox 1.0.5.1, here.
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Interesting. I've tried it on FF 1.07 on a WINXP box; no go. But on my G4, listening via Camino, the files are in: Library-->Caches-->TemporaryItems-->PlugTmp.
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Sounds like a system rights thing to me... Are you logged in as some other user other than the Admin?
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If you want a REAL recommendation for the music you listen to, go to http://www.last.fm. It actually recommends music you will want to listen to. Some of the music that thing recommended to me, is just, uh....
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Hmm.... how the hell it arrived at Celine Dion from the Cocteau Twins is anyone's guess!
I also don't like the fact that you only have a choice between "Don't Like" and "Really Like" (which don't seem equally balanced to me). I would like to see an additional "It's OK" setting, and a "I hate it with every living cell in my body" setting - (which would have come in handy when Celine Dion came on) - lol
Quite a few of the Bands and Tracks that I entered could not be found (e.g. Blue Six) so I didn't even have a starting point in some cases.
I got the impression (from the write up and Pandora FAQ) that it was going to be more intelligent, but while it does seem to make some judgements on things like vocals and rhythms, it doesn't seem to reference chord structures (which are of critical importance in the music I like).
And finally, why do licensing restrictions prevent you from skipping tracks? Being forced to listen to stuff that you hate does not make for an enjoyable experience.
Are the RIAA soon going to make it illegal to NOT listen to their artists?
Edit: OK, 2½ hours of listening now, and it's been almost nothing but lame big-haired Power Ballads (ffs!). I've marked 2 tracks so far as "like" and 51 tracks as "don't like". I'm sorry, but listening to the radio should not be this much hard work (especially when all the effort you put in still gives you such poor results). The idea behind Pandora may be good, but in actual use it's just rubbish (I'm off back to Shoutcast).
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Comparing Celine Dion to the Cocteau Twins is outright sacrilege.
I bet the choice for "it's okay" is to just not click anything; the software will probably assume you neither like or hate it. Skipping a song is probably equivalent to "I hate it with every living cell of my body." On occasion, you'll get a screen that says "Sorry about that; we'll never play that again." Sometimes you can toggle it from the left side controls.
If you like Blue Six, you might try entering something by Thievery Corporation, Zero 7, Vanessa Daou, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sweetback, Massive Attack, or Japan. It does reference chord structures, but the results seem to be hit and miss.
I can't remember the exact reason re: the licensing restrictions, but most internet radio stations (like Launch) are under the same rules. They don't want people to be able to play songs on demand. I agree that it sucks; if a player demands that much interaction, it's too much of a PITA. I can't get any work done. Better to just turn on the old music server and let it shuffle.
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This is really impressive. the music is actually stuff that i like
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Now they just need to combine Last.FM with Pandora.
Evolve the social network by adding music in the same genome from the Pandora Gene-pool.
I think a lot of folks are going to be using Last.FM and adding tunes they found with Pandora, but it would be nice to see something like this built into the service.
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Okay...
About 20 minutes into it.
Registered, clicked on the album cover for each song played and chose "I like it", or "I don't like it".
Sad thing is....only the second song was an "I don't like it".
I am now hopelessly addicted and have already purchased a track. (though not through iTunes).
Yeah, this is Internet Radio Crack, folks. be careful.
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Damn, now I'm addicted too. Really impressive service.
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Found out...if you click the down-arrow on your station-name, you can add artists...so if you like a mix, you can vary the selection a bit.
Got 2 artists it's basing off now, and I've heard at least 10 songs I would *never* have heard otherwise.
I never listen to the radio. Ever. I'm loading this on my home system the second I get home and cranking it up.
I don't want to jump too far ahead here, but I'm pretty sure I will be subscribing to this service.
This is what XM and Sirius could have been, but abysmally failed to be.
Ed,
Thanks for the heads-up on this, man.
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It's also one of the few Flash applications that I've found works well. It really feels like a desktop app inside of the browser.
I entered in about 4 artists and already purchased two songs from other artists I've never heard before. I'm not a radio person at all, but this has definitely changed my outlook on the technology.
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It's altogether stopped on me twice now...but it may be my ... somewhat alien configuration.
Let's just say my PC is nowhere *near* the norm. Also been switching between, like...three stations; UK, Emo Kids, and DieDieDie. (amuse yourself trying to figure out what genres are covered on the latter two)
My home PC wil llikely have no issues with it.
I'm heading to Target to buy a new CD tonight because of this...on top of the two tracks I've already purchased.
Oh, and yeah...the CD's not on Sony's list. ;P
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It's not you or your computer. It crapped out on me several times in the last two hours and I used three different browsers to verify it.
And my guess for Emo Kids: Jeremy Enigk and Craig Wedren, if you have good taste, Dashboard Confessional and A New Found Glory if you don't. DieDieDie is too easy, so I'll take a pass. :P
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Yep, its really amazing that they can do this. While I've downloaded most of my songs through Lime Wire, a controversial practice, this is really an amazing technology. I don't know how regular internet radio will survive once this really gets going.
Wouldn't it be nice if they could do the same thing for Movies?
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lmao...er...no. Apparently I have *really* bad taste.
Never even heard of the first three.
Should I have mentioned that the name of the stations were made with tounge-in-cheek?
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Yeah, I figured you were being tongue in cheek, but now that you have my curiosity stoked, give it up! Who's on your playlist?
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Same thing for movies, eh? Hmmmmm.
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Kind of interesting and fun to have a little more control then your standard internet radio. I like it.
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The only thing that would worry me--is the eerie feeling when I go to their website. This must sound completely crazy, but--I dunno.
It is also weird that they chose the name Pandora.
I am wondering why I am even posting this, as many may no longer respect my opinions here if I'm 'wacko'. I can't explain it either, something about this service is fishey. I think I'll shut up now before I lose all my credability.
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Yeah, ya weirdo. You're not allowed to have an opinion unless it's EXACTLY the same as everyone else's. Until you can do that, just shut up. And none of that "free speech" crap either.
Jeez.
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"I think I'll shut up now before I lose all my credability."
Oh, Snap!
..too late. ;P
Yeah, interesting idea/site...but...something.
I think Pandora is just a bad name for anything...although, ya also have to wonder how many kids today have *any* clue whatsoever what the name implies.
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I'm fairly tolerant. He doesn't have to agree with everyone, only me.
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At least one person who feels what is behind all this "addicting" (not my words, but taken from some comments on this page) stuff.
Yeah - and "Pandora" is taken from the "Box of Pandora", letting loose a bunch of demons into the world. Greek mythology.
See here:
http://www.physics.hku.h.../topics/prometheus.html
or here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora
And YOH, MAN - DO NOT SHUT UP ! !
What do you care for other person's sights, when your's is the only one available for you to live with . . .
Have you ever thought of the majority in history? The majority ALWAYS does the wrong, evil, bad things that bring us all down. Which is, as former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said, "the only congenital defect of democracy".
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Keep in mind, they are simply using it because once you "open" them, a whole bunch of music new music you never would have heard otherwise will be unleashed upon you. Music you'll likely actually like...like. (er...wha?)
I *really* hope that they start pushing indie artists heavily once they get enough of a listenership to cover any fallout.
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exactly. that's my only gripe against it right now. Not enough of the artists I like.
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ROFL
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Heh...but supposedly they'll find artists ya don't know you like. :P
Seriously...I'd like to see someone combine the social-networking with the DNA and give us the double-whammy.
Current, popular (in our social network) music interspersed with new, likely unheard of, music in the same genome. Thus the social network would evolve as new songs were added from the gene-pool. So to speak...
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add artists you do like to the stations with similar musical traits. it'll learn and gets better.
click the arrow next to the station listed on the left, choose add music.
great site.
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I like it a lot.
Pandora is quite good in matching my tastes and exposes me to artists I would otherwise not know about. Pity its noticably lesser quality audio, but hey its free.
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Bah - this is just computerized data bases reporting from what information you deliver by choosing.
This kind of stuff has been done some 30 years before this - just not computerized and without public access for individuals.
Nothing new to derive and develop special musical attributes for special purposes. As I said: they did this some 30 years ago to develop special music for supermarkets and cow houses to get more milk out from those cows - and to manipulate humans in supermarkets. Musicology called these products "MUZAK".
So by now, they will know how to manipulate you musically to reach their objectives - not a word about these, of course.
And again this "journalism" - - @#&*§!
If the writer of this article would have any idea of the complexity of DNA, he wouldn't insult my reason with his cheap comparison.
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If you people like this, also check out:
http://www.last.fm
They operate on pretty much the same idea, except you have to register as a user and install some software to listen in (no spy or adware though =)
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I'm not as impressed with last.fm as I am with Pandora. I had not heard of last.fm though, so thanks for the tip.
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I come across last.fm all the time when doing searches for song titles, but I never knew what last.fm was for.
Pandora has definitely sparked my interest in sites such as this. I will be definitely be giving last.fm a try, for sure.
Thanks for the link.
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its so sweet...ive been listening the last 2 hours since my last post, and this thing has amazing potential...who cares how they got the licensing...they did lol, I don't care. They claim its legal, and there's nothing being stored on my computer so why do I care lol?
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Actually, they are storing some information on your computer via your Flash settings. Hope you got your CrapCleaner up to date ;)
Cheers!
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My new addiction!
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They need to rename the site to IRC™. Internet Radio Crack.
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Jawohl.
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How did they get permission to fully broadcast such a huge library of songs?
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Really amazing technology
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This is really cool...I love it. There are NO ADS as of yet, and the interface is really easy to use, and its cool. I like that you can use it from everywhere. Trick: if you wanna hear only one artist then type in that artist, for example I typed in "Coldplay", I got a couple no name bands, said I didn't like both, then they gave me a Coldplay song, I said I didn't like it and they gave me another, and another now again....try it see if it works for you....I think this is my new (legal) best friend. - do they care that I faked my zip code and live in Canada, apparently they do, but not enough to check my IP's location...haha.
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I found this pretty interesting. I started with an artist I like and the first song was my favorite and the music then moved on to bands I've never heard of but 9 out of the following 10 bands/songs were stuff I would listen to. Yet another ingenious way to get people to want even more music! ;-P
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Awesome site! I just got my ABBA fix for the week!!!
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I'm amused so far ... I placed on one artist, the first song that appeared was one my least favorites by her, the next was a better song - then it jumped artists to another of my favorite artists and picked a song with similar vocal stylings =)
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Try searching by song instead of artist. One artist may have 1 song thats heavy metal and another thats country so it might find some songs that match that country song and you may hate country. But if you search by that heavy metal song instead it'll find all songs that sound similar. I search by artist and I get lots of songs I hate but i search by song and i get amazing results all the time
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HHHMMMM, analyze this! Was DISCO listened very intently to also? Do a little dance, make a little love-- get down tonight, get down tonite! Ohohooooo love to love you baby, Ohhhhhhhhhh, love to love you baby...Ohhhhhhoooohhhhhooooohhhhhhooohhhaaaaahhhhhh gasp!
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Turn it up, baby! lala la la, lala la la...
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I just read all the posts, and haven't even tried this yet, but am already excited about it. iTunes may be using something like this, in that they are now suggesting other artists based on my past purchases, and I've discovered new and wonderful music because of it. It sounds like this system will be even more precise and beneficial to me.
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Well. Talk about a kick in the teeth. I cannot register because I'm not a US resident.
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*punt*
It doesn't say you can't register. It says you need to enter in a valid US Zip Code.
I may not be American, but I can enter in a 5 digit number to listen to the service.
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I've 38 stations so far. Anybody have an inkling of the "AI" behind it? Kind of tricky going thumbs UP or thumbs down because by going thumbs DOWN you modify Pandora's AI in a way that YOU may not have wanted it to be modified.
Incredible potential though. Imagine 4 years from now. You have to be careful when training your stations though. Just because you LIKE a song playing doesn't mean you want it in the current station that you are trying to build.
The thing works incredibly well IF you are very careful when you are training it.
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