Pandora (music service)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Pandora (disambiguation).
 Screenshot of Pandora homepage |
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| URL | http://www.pandora.com/ |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Internet radio |
| Registration | Optional |
| Owner | Pandora Media, Inc. |
| Created by | The Music Genome Project |
Pandora is an automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by The Music Genome Project.
Users begin by entering a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that it thinks are musically similar. Users are then able to provide feedback on the individual song choices — approval or disapproval, which the system takes into account for future selections.
Over 400 different musical aspects are considered when selecting the next song. Examples of these are rhythm syncopation, key tonality, vocal harmonies and displayed instrumental proficiency.
The service has two subscription plans: a free subscription supported by ads, and a fee-based subscription without these ads.
Pandora was featured in an article in the December 2005 issue of Fast Company magazine. The Pandora media player is based in Flash, allowing for simple cross platform portability.
Pandora is also now being featured in Friendster.
MSN Radio is now powered by Pandora. The stations run off Pandora.com and use Pandora accounts rather than Windows Live IDs.
Pandora can be listened through any Slim Devices' products.
Contents |
[edit] Using and tuning
Choosing one artist results in all that artist's catalogued styles being used as a starting point, which may include those which may not be considered representative. Selecting representative tracks by the artist may give closer to the intended results.
Each track played can be responded to in 3 ways:
- Thumbs up - Play more like this
- No response - No change in preference
- Thumbs down - Do not play this track again, play less that are similar. Also skips if any skips are left
- A second negative response to the same artist will ban that artist from the selected playlist unless that artist has been manually added to the playlist or if it has received one or more positive votes
Users can also bookmark songs and artists, read information about them (Backstage options) and buy music.
[edit] Limitations
The content licensing imposes a number of restrictions:
- Currently only licensed for USA registration. This is enforced by requiring that the user enter a US ZIP Code at registration.
- Rewind or repeat is not possible.
- Only 6 skips per hour are allowed, including those resulting from a thumbs down response. However, if at least two music stations are created, switching from the current playing station to a different one and back allows skipping past the built-in limitation. This can also be achieved by leaving and then re-opening the Pandora website.
- Play of a single artist is limited.
[edit] Hacks
Despite concerns of violating the Music Genome's rules and breaking copyright law, a few hacks for Pandora have sprung up to enhance the functionality and ease of use already present. The two that are most prominent are:
- Pandora's Box / PandoraMan
- Pandora's Jar
- Pandora's Jar acts as a wrapper as well for the Pandora tuner, but includes much more functionality alongside. Pandora's Jar runs in a browser as well and provides integration into Last.fm, as well as CDDB. Pandoras Jar's main attraction and feature is the ability to extract the music files you are listening to in the tuner at the time.
[edit] Categories used by Pandora to determine musical matches
According to Pandora, there are "literally hundreds of musical attributes" used to categorize and match songs.
[edit] See also
- List of online music databases
- Audiobaba
- LAUNCHcast, a similar, web-based service by Yahoo!.
- Live365, a similar service, pre-chosen and customizable radio stations.
