Why Pandora and the Music Genome Project is AMAZING

Pandora claims to analyze song traits based on hundreds of musical qualities and then play similar songs. In their words:


"Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like."

When I first heard about Pandora a few years back, I thought this was just marketing. But in the last year or so, I've started to use Pandora on a regular basis, and have over 60 artists and tons of thumbs up/downed songs on my main station. I now know Pandora's claims are totally legit. At times, I'm puzzled as to how they even do it.

We've grown accustomed to hearing music grouped together by similar genre, but never have songs been grouped together based on small music attributes in the way Pandora does. Many times songs played back-to-back will be incredibly similar...almost as if they flow together. Other times, there will be 2 songs that have pretty different sounds, but there is a hook or riff that makes you think the 2nd band ripped the 1st one off. I came across an example while listening today. 2 obscure songs by relatively obscure artists.

Song #1 - "Kerosene" by Mad At Gravity
Song #2 - "Makeshift" by 32 Leaves

As a whole, the songs aren't very similar. But listen to the guitars in "Kerosene" from the 10 to the 20 second mark:


and now listen to the guitars in "Makeshift" from 1:12 - 1:30




That's no joke right there. Those two licks are very similar, but the songs sound nothing alike. If the drums behind both songs were the same, you'd notice it even more. Again, it's not like this is Daughtry and Nickelback. These are 2 bands well under the radar (MAG was only around for a year or 2 in the early 2000's). How does Pandora do that? It's nuts. If it were just this one time, I'd chalk it up to coincidence, but this happens somewhat frequently when listening to Pandora. In fact, right after this, it played a Breaking Benjamin song (can't remember which one) that had a guitar part that was similar to another part in the 32 Leaves track. To have music matched up at that level is absolutely crazy...especially for something that is free.

I'm not saying Pandora is the hands down best from a listeners perspective, but as a musician, I gotta say... I'm f**king impressed. I can't wait to get our new EP done so we can get our tunes up there.


Preach Truth. Believe Lies.
-Chris