Rob Walker teases out much of what’s wrong with Pandora in the New York Times Magazine < http://bit.ly/hdUhV > (including, as I discovered a few months ago, the astonishing absence of Fela Kuti).
What struck me from the beginning, when Pandora made its debut in 2005, was that they picked the wrong metaphor. Music Genome Project makes a promise on which it can’t deliver. At least not yet.
The genome is what shows us how much humans are more or less the same as Fleischmann’s yeast, even though you’d never know it by looking at us.
By extension, cracking the music genome would explain why some people are drawn both to Beethoven and to Norah Jones. It would reveal the ways in which apparently different musical phenotypes disguise surprising similarities under the surface.
If you tell Pandora you like Bill Evans, you don’t find yourself eventually listening to Javanese gamelan. Instead, you are treated to yet more white jazz guys from the 1950s and 60s: Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan. Here, the surface similarities disguise a fundamental difference in approach. The Brubeck and Mulligan tracks served up by Pandora are usually active and uptempo – and they punch a hole in the quiet introspection I seek in Bill Evans.
The new media landscape offers much to love, but Pandora represents a step backward. Those of us who grew up listening to FM radio looked to the DJs to expose us to things we never knew existed. The Internet makes it too easy to block out things you think you don’t like. There: I discovered a genomic link between Pandora and Fox News.
I keep looking online for a new generation of curators willing to shape the public’s taste because they have confidence in their own. Where are those people?
Are those people on internet radio? Which doesn't make it any easier to find them.
That's a great article. But "makes a promise on which it can't deliver"??? why not "promises what it can't deliver"?
simplify, simplify, …
try Dublab, an LA-based collective. They have a lot of great DJs, tastemakers, etc. I've found lots of offbeat stuff there, old and new, plus live performances of new bands.
My favorite djs are Chico Sonido, Kutmah and Frosty. http://dublab.com/labrats
How ironic. I've largely ignored Pandora until tonight just before I wandered over to your blog. I had listened to the White Stripe's "Apple Blossom" on my iPod and was too lazy to play DJ, so I let Pandora take over. I agree with you, the selections don't inspire me like the best college radio. I was hoping for some raunchy '30s blues but instead got Frank Black and The Auteurs. Rob Walker did a good job deconstructing it.