Testing Pandora

by George Ziemann -- February 5, 2009

Armed with new technology, it's time to test out some of the things that have been unavailable before. First stop is Pandora, home of the Music Genome Project, designed to help you find new music. Last I heard the RIAA royalties were threatening their future.

Day One (yesterday) -- I'm going to give this a shot, in search of new music, hopefully some of which will not belong to the RIAA. The long shot is that Pandora brings Hayden's Wall into the mix.

Pandora asks me to pick one of my favorite artists. I choose Pink Floyd.

This links us to Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and "Free Bird." How the hell did that get in here? It gets marked "Never play again." That's an awesome feature. I don't necessarily want to block all the Skynyrd songs, so it'll be interesting to see if it ever offers one up again.

Annoying feature -- You can't acknowledge that, yeah this song is okay and just move on to the next one more than once or twice an hour. Otherwise you've got to listen all the way through, which kind of slows the discovery process. This is an RIAA feature, no doubt.

Day Two -- It starts out with Floyd, Hendrix and The Beatles.

  • Tom Petty -- "Running Down a Dream"
  • Rolling Stones -- "Wild Horses"

More Floyd, first a Roger Waters live version of The Wall that I've already heard twice in 24 hours. Don't play it for a month, please. This jumps to "Any Colour You Like," from DSOTM.

  • Davie Bowie -- "Space Oddity" -- Rejected. I'm not a big Bowie fan.
  • Aerosmith -- "Dream On"
  • Pink Floyd -- "Keep Talking" (from Echoes)
  • The Doors -- "The End" -- This played yesterday and I gave it a thumbs up. But I forgot about all of the "Fuck" going on, which used to be amusing and now seems a little much. So today I switch to a thumbs down, which may or may not confuse the Pandora machine.
  • The Who -- "Baba O'Reilly" -- Thumbs Up, but this is on the TV all the time, the next time it shows up, I'm going to ask to not play it for a month.
  • Beatles -- "Let It Be" -- How long does Pandora take you through a list of RIAA hits before it gets to the discover part? No wonder they're complaining about royalties.
  • Neil Young -- "Heart of Gold" -- I hope it doesn't think I like slide guitar.
  • Led Zeppelin - "Thank You"
  • Jimi Hendrix -- "Watchtower"

Day Three

  • Pink Floyd -- "Keep Talking" (from Echoes)
  • Beatles -- "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
  • Led Zeppelin -- "No Quarter"

I'm expecting the next song to be Hendrix, The Doors and The Who. The ads on Pandora are really not that annoying at all.

I'm thinking that maybe I'm going about this wrong. Okay, I see that you can add other artists to the mix. I was hoping to find Hayden's Wall, but we're not on the list, drastically diminishing the possibility that it's ever going to show up on the playlist. I make a note to work on that problem, then add ELP, Kansas, Savoy Brown and Deep Purple to push it into a few new directions at once. I wish I would have figured this out on day one.

  • Cream (first instance) -- Deserted Cities of the Heart
  • Led Zeppelin -- The Lemon Song
  • Journey -- Faithfully

I ask Pandora why it played that song.

Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features a prominent rhythm piano part, intricate melodic phrasing, a clear focus on recording studio production, major key tonality, and a vocal-central aesthetic.

Holy shit! I'm going to have to look at this more often, but not too often.

  • Kansas -- Play the Game Tonight -- Thumbs Down
    I like Kansas a lot. Except for the songs that have been played to death on the radio. I just told Pandora to add Kansas into the mix, but the first Kansas song they play goes on the "Never again" list.
  • Doors -- People Are Strange
  • Pink Floyd -- One of These Days -- Chosen for its "minor key tonality." So I like songs in major keys AND in minor keys.
  • Beatles -- Getting Better -- Repeat from day one.
  • Led Zeppelin -- The Wanton Song

So far, Journey and Tom Petty have been Pandora's biggest stretches in logic. And they haven't brought in what I'd consider an obscure song from anywhere yet.

  • AC/DC -- T.N.T. -- A reasonable connection from Zeppelin.
    Features electric rock instrumentation, punk influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony, extensive vamping and a major key tonality.
  • Deep Purple -- What's Goin' On Here

Day Four

  • Savoy Brown -- I'm Tired/Where Am I
  • Jimi Hendrix -- Mannish Boy

Well, Pandora is finally off the Top 40 list.

  • Chicken Shack -- When My Left Eye Jumps

And here we are, the first song I've never heard before, by a band I've never heard of before. By the sound of if, it's from the late 60s, early 70s, which makes it all the more surprising that I never at least stumbled across Chicken Shack. But it's a slow blues that sounds like a million other slow blues songs. It was okay, but not really what I was looking for. I give it a skip.

  • J Geils Band -- Homework

Okay, the apparent answer to the question of how long it takes for Pandora to start finding music I hadn't heard before is four days. More accurately, the answer is about 5 hours, which is pretty damn amazing in my opinion, considering the amount of music I have listened to in the last 40 years.

Those first four tunes were all unfamiliar, even though I knew three of the bands, and only because I had not bought the particular albums those songs were on.

I don't have enough time to wait until it links to Hayden's Wall, and I expect it will be a while before I get to any indies, but I think I'm going to stick with Pandora when I'm in "listen to the radio" mode. It's actually better than commercial radio. Once you tell Pandora something sucks, it never comes back; the "commercials" don't scream at you; you choose the primary featured artists; and it truly does find new music that you like.

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