I have discovered a great site for free music that is tailored to your own musical tastes. It is called Pandora®, The Music Genome Project®, and you can find it at www.pandora.com.
Basically, this is how it works:
You pick a song, artist or album that you like, and create your own radio station based on that style of music. The site will then start playing songs that are similar in style musically, vocally, rhythmically, and many other variations. Then, you can give the song a thumbs up or thumbs down based on your opinion of it. If you give it a thumbs up, it will continue to deliver songs that their technology has decided you might like. If you give it a thumbs down, the site will change the parameters and perform new calculations to eventually zero in on your musical tastes.
The coolest part about this idea, is that you end up finding a lot of GREAT music that you either never heard of, or never knew you liked! For instance, I started one of my stations with Temple of the Dog, and naturally, I got songs by Audioslave, Pearl Jam, Live, and Soundgarden, but I also got a song from Earshot, a band that I apparently missed the boat on. Presto! I just found a new album that I like! Man, these guys are smart!
And not only do you get to listen to the songs for free, but they have bios about the band, reviews of the albums, cover art, etc.
And you can create different radio stations based on what you feel like listening to at the time. Maybe you want to listen to something that has a vocal that is more clean sounding or music that is more jazz oriented. You can create a Police station, (there's a play on words for you) and maybe discover The Fixx, Yes, Earth Opera, or an obscure David Bowie song that you never heard before. Who knows?
I have no idea how it works, but this is how they explain it.
The Music Genome Project®
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.
Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.
Since we started back in 2000, we've carefully listened to the songs of tens of thousands of different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.
It has been quite an adventure, you could say a little crazy - but now that we've created this extraordinary collection of music analysis, we think we can help be your guide as you explore your favorite parts of the music universe.
We hope you enjoy the journey.
Tim Westergren
Founder
The Music Genome Project
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