Then you have just thought of Pandora.com which is the outlet for the Music Genome Project and project that has been running for over 6 years with a mission to build a database of musical links allowing users to discover more artists and tracks similar to the ones they know and love. It's a simple premise that you can build a database of musical tastes both with popular artists and obscure ones, but try and do it and you'll realise what a gargantuan task it must be. Just because I think a track by the Zutons goes well with one from the Kooks doesn't mean you do, does it?

So like the best systems in the www world the Music Genome Project has a very simple and disarming interface at Pandora.com, it takes  a little while to load and then asks you for a track, artist or album to make a start from. Lets say you went for the Zutons, Pandora starts by streaming a Zutons track for you to provide feedback on. The audio quality is good, surprisingly so, this isn't a poor 64k web radio service its sound like at least 128kbps and as good as iTunes or other download stores.

Our suggestion of The Zutons was followed by a track from calling all monsters, which wasn't quite to our tastes, you can find out why it was recommended by clicking on the feedback panel. In this case the suggestion was due to Vocal harmonies and a punk influence, you quickly learn that the link between tracks is less that other like it but more that the musical styles fit with the same type of genre and style, instrumentation etc.

You can start to build you ideal station and you are entitled to store up to 100 of them, each station learns more from your choices, either voting them a good match or a poor one. It is possible to skip tracks you don't like or just don't want to hear right now, however this skip is limited in order to comply with Pandora's music license which has to be more like an internet radio station than a download store. If you were to think of Pandora as an online Jukebox with a brain, you'd be pretty close.

We tried numerous tests with different artists and on the whole after the first few tracks we ended up with a tailored web radio station much more personalised than anything we've found on the web to date. Even using Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings as our starting point brought us quickly to deep funk classics from James Brown and Stanton Moore.

the service is advertising supported for the free sign up, it's also only available to USA residents but for anyone with an IQ higher than 10 you'll soon see that you just need a USA Zip code to make this bit work. The adverts aren't at all intrusive but if you insist on removing them then you can always pay $12 a quarter to get rid of them. Perhaps the big selling point of the free Pandora service is their tie up with Slim Devices and the Squeezebox 3 which we gave a glowing review to. Using your squeezebox you can now access Pandora and get all the great features on a real stereo as opposed to a PC.

Downsides? well of course there are some, for a start there is no mechanism to purchase legal downloads of the tracks you discover, so you'll need to make a note of the tracks you like and then go hunting elsewhere for them. Sadly this is also tricky as there is no easy list of tracks played by your station just the ability to scroll back through the album thumbnails, it would be nice to be able to print or store a list.

But the upsides more than outweigh any negatives of this innovative music service, the audio quality is good (very good for a streamed web service) the depth of music is also remarkable unless you want Latin or Classical tracks, the user interface is so simple even my Mum can use it and lastly its free!

We love finding great bits of software or sites on Lordpercy.com and Pandora.com and the music genome project is an example of what's good about the web and far better than relying on Amazons, you bought this....so buy that!

www.pandora.com

Published - 14/05/2006

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