"On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever" (pandora.com). The Music Genome Project "set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level by assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome" (pandora.com). These genes give a song a certain musical identity looking at everything from melody to lyrics.. considering everything about the song, not necessarily the band's image or typical genre.
I discovered this website through a friend this past summer while we were interning together. It is a free internet radio that helped us pass the time and kept us entertained. By entering in an artist's name or specifec song that you like the website takes that and makes an entire radio station with other songs that contain similar "genes." In hearing familiar songs I was happy to have been introduced to this website but what really intrigued me was the fact that I was discovering new songs and bands that I may not had heard of before. Because the Music Genome Project took the time to take a deeper look into every aspect of a song I have been exposed to so much more than what I was originally expexting.
I feel that it is websites like this that help bands to be heard and I hope to learn how to later be able to contact groups like the Music Genome Project to help an upcoming group get discovered.
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I'm a big fan of Pandora radio. It is a perfect example of the kind of new business model that has sprung up in the last 5 years. You give free access to the intellectual content of these artists, but make it very easy for people to buy music legally through online retailers. They've successfully supported themselves so far by taking a small fee from sales they've referred. Bands win because they get more exposure. Online retailers win because they get more sales. Pandora wins because they have a great service that people use. And yet, the whole thing almost got shut down because congress was trying to charge them a per play fee the same as terrestrial radio. This shows me that it is imperative for us to elect representatives who know something about the way digital media works, who know that the internet is more than "a series of tubes".
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