Saturday 5 May 2007

The problem with Pandora

Listening to Pandora. You hear some good things. They're playing me something by someone called K. McCarty now. You can click on a button & they'll tell you why:

"Based on what you've told us this far, we're playing this song because it features a subtle use of harmony, meandering vocals and prominent organ [fnarr fnarr] and many other similarities identified in the music genome project."

Mmm... see the problem here? I don't think I'd describe my own tastes as "well, I love a bit of vocal warbling and a prominent organ". (Well, maybe my tastes in boy bands.) I'd like to think there's something a bit more complex going on. Maybe they should stop trying to parse our music with genetic algorithms or whatever, and make a real breakthrough in music technology by cloning John Peel.

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