Pandora Radio® is a website that creates personalized music playlists for users based on their preferences. Pandora is based on mathematical algorithms that break down a song into components and rate its similarity to a song the user enjoys. It was created a group of tech-savvy musicians known as The Music Genome Project. Many consider Pandora to be a monumental achievement in music analysis, and it has exploded in popularity since its release in the early twenty-first century.
A song is distinguished from other pieces of music the dozens of individual components that make it unique. Pandora Radio® analyzes each song’s individual components, including the rhythm, instruments used, harmonic scheme, musical key, and lyrical themes. Overall, The Music Genome Project has over 2000 different categories that can be used to evaluate a song. These categories are used to find songs that closely match your preferences when creating your own Pandora station.
Pandora Radio® is currently free to users, and it is primarily supported on-site advertising from third parties. Users are also given links to purchase the songs or albums they are listening to through an mp3 download service such as iTunes or Amazon. Fans claim that this service promotes the image that Pandora Radio is not exploiting musicians, but rather is a tool for exposing an audience to music they might enjoy but would not have discovered otherwise.
To begin a Pandora Radio® station, first select a song or artist that you enjoy. After that, the station will play an example of a song the artist you selected, to which you can give a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Because an artist’s music can have a variety of styles, this option allows the station to refine your selection. Pandora will then play more music with similar characteristics, such as subtle harmonies, acid jazz influences, or folk song roots. You can also rate these with a thumbs up or down, fine-tuning your preferences as you go to create your ideal radio station.
Due to their use of thousands of songs various artists, Pandora Radio® has understandably run into some copyright issues. Pandora is only available in the United States due to court rulings, though the company is in talks to expand into the European market. Because Pandora is a free service that relies heavily on advertising, some speculate that it will be unable to cope with the current economic downturn without drastically altering its operating procedures and charging users to use the service.
Since its inception, Pandora has grown to include a wide range of applications. In addition to a downloadable podcast called Pandora Podcast®, there are now apps for Apple iPhones® that allow you to use the service. Members of the popular social-networking website Facebook can now add Pandora stations to their personal profiles, resulting in a massive increase in Pandora Radio® users.