On Oct 2, 1:13 pm, "David Eduardo" wrote:

You can create a start point, with a list of songs. Pandora creates a
playlist based on those songs, and you can indicate those you like a lot or
don't want to hear again, and Pandora refines its list for you. It is very
cool, particularly the engine behind it.

I'm not convinced. All I had to do was choose Bob Wills as a starting
point and Pandora began selecting everything from Willie Nelson to
Travis Tritt. Uh, no. Bob Wills is closer to Benny Goodman than to
the country stars. The so-called "music genome" project is not
science. It is a subjective measure based on obvious bias; in this
case a bias that says "all country music is the same". I happen to
hate most country music, but I'll drop what I'm doing to go out and
hear any Western swing band.

I happen to know a couple people who work for Pandora as listeners or
evaluators or whatever they're called. They're not convinced that the
"genome" project is very scientific at all.

Their "engine" such as it is, appears to be a database that selects
based on an average of about 30 of their 200 or so criteria. And it
looks as if they toss in an occasional random selection about every 20
songs or so.