Tuesday, June 2, 2009

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Pandora offers an interesting web radio experience. Type in a band name and an algorithm within the system will play other music with similar musical qualities. It's an interesting way to hear music that might be like the music you already like. Radio used to do this sort of thing, but these days radio programmers would rather play music that they already know people will buy. How that makes sense I have no idea, which is why I'm not in radio.

Of course, if you type in a unique band, Pandora's system is quickly defeated. Not very many bands sound like Jason and the Scorchers, so it starts casting pretty far afield pretty quickly.

Listening to it for a length of time will have the same effect. There is no way that a human listener would figure that a series of songs that sound like those from the late 1970s/early 1980s outfit Rockpile would include "Rock of Ages" from MTV metal-heads Def Leppard, but Ye Olde Algorithm apparently gets pretty stressed after a couple of hours.

Good to know there are some things computers can't do yet.

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