f13.net

I'm probably just late on the uptake again but for those of you who haven't seen it yet:

http://www.pandora.com/

Works really well as an internet jukebox and reasonable well to find new music but much is based on the obscurity of the band you reference. Putting in a band like Kaiser Chiefs brings up a bunch of UK new-punk bands I've never heard before. Putting in Jack Johnson brings up mostly hippie/folk rock I already now.

YMMV

This is really cool, but part of me wonders, "what's the catch?". I can't figure out how they can do this for free and without ads on their site.

Read in their FAQ: http://blog.pandora.com/faq/

It just started. They are going to be "ramping up" their advertising over the next few months. Otherwise you can buy a yearly license fairly cheap ($36/year) that gets rid of all advertising. I have no idea what "ramping up" means and the free version could quickly become useless. But right now it's pretty nice.

Edit: Should say really nice in that I haven't heard an add yet in over an hour of listening.

The more I read through the FAQ the more it sounds like a cool concept. It all depends on how well it works and learns. Up till this point I had been creating a bunch of different stations to test it out but supposedly you can rank each song that plays and it will learn from those rankings to tailor the station to your tastes. I've now started a station with Sublime (seemed like a good choice to combine various musical styles) and we'll see how well it really learns over the next day or so.

I should add that with dial-up, it's almost not worth it, but I'm still listening to a (laggy as hell) alternative version to Gone for Good by the SHins that's pretty nice.

Ecch. Jimmy Page. No Jimmy Page, just Page & Plant. Similar artists: Eddie Money, Great White, Bon Jovi. Ehh...fuck that noise.

Better results with the song "Since I've Been Loving You" : Drinkin' Blues by Blues Creation, which is an almost exact match, I Put A Spell On You by CCR, a great song. I love the minor tonality and triple feel. Pretty cool toy that will be utterly crushed when word gets around.

That's one of my favorite oft-covered songs. My personal faves are the versions by Crazy World of Arthur Brown (my avatar), Nina Simone and Screamin' Jay Hawkins.

Why? They've been around since August in the subscription only format. This version came out 2 days ago. They at least claim to be licensed which is why they don't offer exact songs on demand, or rewind ability. The best you can do is pause and skip.

Or do you mean crushed by Bandwidth? I guess I automatically just assume the RIAA will try to crush any new technology that makes listening to music enjoyable again.

I just meant the RIAA tends to crap on anything cool.

I've been bursting to get some new music lately, this site tipped me over the edge, though only a couple were songs from Pandora.

Stuff I ordered, not in any way eclectic:

Scab Dates - The Mars Volta
Maggot Brain - Funkadelic
Quintette du Hot Club de France - Django Reinhard
The Essential Chet Atkins
When Negroes Walked the Earth - Otis Taylor
Greatest Animals Hits - Eric Burdon
The Progressive Blues Experiment - Johnny Winter
Live in Boston, Vol 1 - Fleetwood Mac
Live at the Atlanta International Pop Festival - The Allman Brothers Band

Some notes: The Burdon disc is live with War, doing Animals songs. Brings a nice soul/funk feel with Burdon's great voice. The Fleetwood Mac disc is early on, with Peter Green, extended blues/jazz jams, not the later pop/folk crap (well, relatively imo). The ABB live stuff is always great, this disc features Johnny Winter on a few tracks. Those three and the Winter disc were prompted by Pandora. Nice site, great to remind me of stuff I forget when I go to order music.

12/8 time, minor tonality, syncopation, blues influence, extensive vamping, prominent organ, electric guitar solo and vocal-oriented melodies seem to be my thing.

Raph has some links to this stuff on his blog in a post on Thinking Like the Audience (http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=160#more-160), in response to a post on another blog (http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/if/think-player.html).  The original topic didn't interest me half so much as the sources cited.

In particular, the emergence of software that picks hits (http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/13190626.htm) in recent years and this analysis of what makes all time top sellers (http://www.airwindows.com/analysis/Dynamics.html), like Stairway to Heaven suggests that taste in music can be accounted for, and that people have predictable patterns they will listen to.

Which in the short term produces new concerns for me in the area of innovation being stifled by prediction.  In the longer term, one wonders, if music does have successful patterns in its design, is there the real possibility that computers could write songs, just as computers play chess?  And if so, does it follow that humans will one day cease to be the primary creators of art?

They didn't regocnize a single group which I asked it for. Anyway, I usualy just tune in to an internet radio playing music of genres I like. Winamp takes up fairly small ammount of system resource and by plugin enables global hotkeys, which owns when you're gaming. http://shoutcast.com for those who haven't tried it.

This thing is awesome.  I wholeheartedly approve.

This has made my day. Awesome.

Music is just math at a certain level, so yes, I can see computers writing the notes.  However, the lyrics are always the important part to me (and I know I'm not alone even if I'm not in the majority there.)  If a song has a good beat and I can get into it but the lyrics are insipid poppy nothing I just can't stand it.  This is why I dislike Kiss, even though it fits well into my musical tastes.  Repetition of the same few phrases for 3-5 minutes bores the shit out of me.  I don't see computers writing poetry or meaningful song lyrics for some time to come.

Radio/tv/billboard != the totality of music, just a very thin veneer.

As long as there are people making instruments, and people playing them, there will be people writing music. Even if humans are no longer the primary providers of the capitalist revenue stream entertainment outlets. But who gives a shit who is writing Ashlee Simpson's songs, anyway?

I for one welcome our new mechanical composer overlords.

Well, it can't be all that bad.  I put in "Iron Maiden" and the first song Pandora came back with was "Paschendale."  I win.  :heart:

Still, when I listen to music on my computer, it's either my iTunes play list (soundtracks or metal usually) or Digitally Imported (http://www.digitallyimported.com) for trance when I'm working.  For whatever reason, I love listening to trance while I'm working at the computer, but unless I'm at a club, I wouldn't really listen to it at any other time.

I love this thing, it found similar stuff to pretty much every song I entered. Even not really mainstream stuff like "The Light Before We Land" by the Delgados.

Music is just as much an expression of the human will as it is the numbers and degrees of notes, timbre, and other technical features associated with it.

AI (eventually/possibly) wouldn't have many problems making use of and/or replicating the phenomenal/technical aspects, but any non-materialist* would hold that the creative will would be completely out of reach for an artificial intelligence. That AI would be no different than a Zombie when it comes this area. Whether they're right is another thing. Is the Will unique, or merely an aspect of the consciousness that can it be replicated too?

* Yup, there's that word that I was using in that Politics thread. This isn't a crosspost though. Just coincidental, and what I believe applies here. Point being: A materialist considers the consciousness itself as a construct, and the metaphysical will of man to be irrelevant. I don't. For a broader definition of what I'm talking about (pertaining to art, as well as the will in general), this (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0486217612/104-1948094-9815968?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance) has always been a good place to start.

Software that predicts hits is not a surprise - music (aside from lyrics and vocals) is easy to analyze. Most people with an understanind of music can predict hits well already. There are certain people in the music business that produce all kinds of songs - if you look at the people who write Britney Spears music, a lot of them write for a ton of other popular performers. A good example is that woman Meredith Brooks who sang "I'm a a bitch, I'm a lover." She writes a lot of pop hits. There is a small circle of people who write the majority of pop hits.

Likewise something like this is not that surprising. Again music is fairly easy to analyze. What is the signiature, the chord structure, etc? Finding music that sounds a lot like other music (again minus the vocals and lyrics) isn't too difficult.

Computers *writing* music is another story. I think you could have a computer write music that sounds decent to a lot of listeners. But could a computer create a new genre or wave of music? That would be a lot harder.

Reading about this service, it appears the analysis is not done by computer but done by hand - crazy!

Edit: I tried KMFDM and got back some pretty reasonable stuff like Ministry. Then I tried Queensryche - first result back is Sammy Hagar. Oops. The two are superficially similar but QR is a pretty intellectual band and Sammy Hagar is....Sammy Hagar. (And I'm out of fast forwards ack!) It would be interesting to compare this to the Amazon "people who bought this also bought this other thing" which contains no actual analysis whatsoever.

Damn now I'm on Warrant...ok this is losing it's luster!

I'm going to sign up and play with the "more like this" and "less like this" buttons to see if I can get it to conform to my tastes. Will report back.

Edit: My queensryche experiment is interesting - about 1/3 of it is good, 1/3 is emo music, and 1/3 is 80s slut rock like Ratt and Warrant. One of my problems is that I can't enter any songs from Queensryche's best album. I guess they haven't gotten around to cataloging the best concept album of all time - lazy bastards!

Final edit: Most of the music I like isn't on the site. I tried entering some KMFDM but they only have their recent stuff. Same with Queensryche. I randomly tried Veruca Salt (don't ask), same deal there. I guess for someone like me who is stuck in the late 70s to mid 90s it isn't so great. It seems heavily biased towards more recent albums.

I loved Veruca Salt, but I'm a slut for girls with guitars.  Always have been.

The thing that got me thinking about computers writing music was the article on mastering albums.  The point about a small group of people making most of the hits actually reinforces my thinking on this.  If you are basically working to a set of formulas, then you are likely to be machine replacable.  I agree that machines might be more challenged when it comes to becoming a new genre.

Margalis: see my first post. I've had much better results using a song as the basis, artists tend to pop up some wildly varied stuff.

Evangolis: I was in school for studio engineering (64 track recording) for about a year. I eventually dropped out when the band relocated from LA to SF, but I was about to switch majors to improvisational instrumentation, because the entire recording program was aimed at being 'the guy behind the hits'. Used to be a core of band musicians that sat in the back of the class mocking stuff, but I guess if you're in it for the money, that's where the money is. Being the guy who writes, produces, arranges and plays instrumentation on the track that gets Ashlee to #1.

Because of the multi-royalty dipping, mostly. Ashlee gets performance royalties, but the Wizard of Oz gets the lion's share.

I sure as hell don't think that most of the music I enjoy and consider good could ever be produced by a small group of music guru's, let alone a computer.

Sure you can come up with a lot of filler music according to the dominant tastes of the time, but that's not much of an achievment; it's not "making music" in a real sense IMHO.

I was listening to my Xiu Xiu radio before and heard some songs I liked (by Momus, The Church, & Casiotone For The Painfully Alone), some I didn't have much of an opinion on, and some I really didn't like (Depeche Mode, Human League, Britney Spears). They all had many similar elements, but that didn't stop half of them being total rubbish. Even with music there are many many aspects which cannot be picked up without some form of intelligence, and even among those who can pick them up opinions can differ. There's one quality I noticed when listening to 'Patsy Cline Radio' they they called "heartbreaking lyrics". Who decides what the hell that means?

The site's music library is a bit small, too many repeats. Otherwise it's great. Talking about machinemademusic or whatever is just a waste of time.

I've noticed that as well. As of right now they only have abou 10,000 artists which broken down across different genre's isn't really a whole lot. Hopefully that will grow more quickly as this thing becomes more popular and they start generating some revenue. Then again as someone above mentioned they've been cataloging music by hand so maybe the growth won't be that fast after all....

I've tried using songs I like but most of the songs I like they don't have. I've tried KMFDM, Veruca Salt, Cathedral and Queensryche, couldn't get any songs I liked from any of those.

Heh. When I put in "Since I've Been Loving You", I got two solid days worth of great music with almost no overlap!

They take suggestions for additions to their library too.  I got a non-form email back within about a day of requesting some Pirate Jenny, so human beings do review the suggestions.

This is a cool site.  If nothing else, I've discovered just how many really shitty bands are able to make a living in music.  When I say shitty, I don't mean style... I mean musicianship.  Some REALLY bad groups out there... I mean worse_than_garage_band bad.

Thanks for the link.  I signed up!

Those two statements aren't related right? ;)

I guess I should have stated that the good outweighs the bad.  Good, bad, or indifferent, being exposed to new things is a plus.  I'm hearing bands that I would have never had a chance to otherwise.  For that, I was thanking UD_Delt.

Note to self: Don't post while in the middle of 3 other projects... it will help me make more sense.

Hehe - I saw the opening and took it. ;)

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast/images/art/gallery/fs/tom_knifeinmyback.gif)

It just occurred to me that although in some respects this isn't as good as having one's own music library, it is superior in every way imaginable to conventional radio stations.  If they could make a version of this that I could install in my car, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Music Match has been doing this same service for the last 5 years.  It was a good deal until they were bought-out by yahoo and they turned the software into a bloated piece of crap.   They also let you match up to 10 groups for your streaming stations.

My thought is that Sirius (or XM but I have Sirius) needs to jump on this thing as soon as possible. They need some web front end to create your stations and then to let you stream them on certain channels of your receiver in your car. I can't really see anything that would prevent this from happening technology wise. At this point you wouldn't be able to rank the songs and skip and such but on future receivers I could see them adding more bandwidth to the upstream to facilitate that.

I just got in the live Scab Dates by The Mars Volta. Holy shit, I think they just might be the best modern band I've heard. It's a bit of a listen to digest, but yet another amazing disc from the band, and the fact that it's live puts them up at the top of the list of my favorite modern bands. Three thumbs up.

This is quite possible the coolest thing on the internet ever.  Thanks for sharing :)

Thumbs up! This alone also makes this site better than any I have seen:

 Hey! Can I send you my band's music?

Sure! Feel free to send us a copy of your record, but first please read the info and follow the guidelines below (that'll give everyone the best chance of encountering more great undiscovered music in the Music Genome Project):

Music Genome Project Submissions Process:

   1. YOU SEND.
          * A CD (or a CDR, if it's in really cool home-made, hand-made artistic regalia) with your music on it. It must have a valid UPC barcode.
          * A few pages of biographical information and related stuff about your music if you have it. We're interested in knowing more about you: press quotes, tour date information similar artists, and so on.
          * Please include your band name and an email address on everything you send us. We don't want to mix it up or lose it.
          * If you are a music label, please feel free to send info on your artists.
          * Send to:
            Pandora
            (formerly Savage Beast Technologies)
            Attn: Music Genome Project Indie Submission
            360 22nd Street, Suite 390
            Oakland, CA 94612

   2. WE LISTEN. We love music, and we understand that many excellent records are out there just waiting to be discovered. We listen to EVERYTHING that we receive. Period.

   3. WE DECIDE. Sadly, we cannot add every CD that we receive to the Music Genome Project. Our Senior Analysts (who are all excellent musicians and artists, and also generally cool people) are responsible for auditioning your submissions for inclusion.

   4. (HOPEFULLY) WE CONTACT YOU. If your music has been enrolled into the Genome we'll send you an email. We will not contact you if your music has not been enrolled. We know it sounds a bit cold, but we're just too small to do more. Please understand. If you are concerned about ensuring that your CD has arrived, we suggest you send your package through the USPS with return receipt, so you know that we got it.

This site is just super-nifty.

After extensive testing in the last two days (I need something to do while finishing term papers), I've come to the conclusion that you can really juke individual stations based on the "like it" and "don't like it" options.  I've managed to take Pavement and branch them into blues, surf, 70s punk, pre-punk kickass rockness, acid rock (hurrah for Blue Cheer), and a buncha other niftiness....the station I've created as a result makes it wholly unnecessary for me to rely on my mp3 player for office music. 

Oooh, it just moved into 60s soul. 

This is by far the coolest thing on the internet.

Wow, I must be missing something.

Then again, it's not like it has that much competition for it be the coolest thing on the internet.

No offense to you guys or anything, I'm just being honest. I'm a musician, and I'm a complete fiend for music....But I'm just not digging this.

[edit] Toss it up to me being an album guy. Err....I think.

I have to say that, left to its own devices, the site does create some shittacular streams.  However, if you take into account the licenses they have, they can never do a truly album oriented rock format for their streams.  With a good amount of micromanagement, you can nurture a stream that only puts out stuff you like.  Granted, I've been working on papers for about two days straight, save yesterday's eating binge.  Maybe I've catassed my stream to victory, I'm not sure at this point.

My "Since I've Been Loving You" stream is the coolest thing on the internet, short of Google, of course.

I like it because it's a short-cut to expanding my meagre music collection and to discovering music.  I got by in my teen years leeching off a friend with a 1000+ CD/Vinyl collection but I don't have access to that anymore.  Plus my last few blind purchases have been pretty hit and miss.

Ah, that's cool then. It's much the same way I've been buying/listening to albums all of these years.

Say, when I was 13, I really liked some band....Liked them so much that I had to know the people behind the work....From that, I'd discover their influences and current likes (This goes without mentioning younger bands influenced by them later on). From their influences and likes, I'd discover more bands that I dug, and so forth. Most of the time, these bands didn't have an apparant similarity in sound (like this site charts things)....Except in a more abstract way. Production and instrumentation could be completely different, but there was a similarity in certain musical ideas, choices, and sensibility.

Just by liking Sonic Youth, for example, I soon became aware of Television and Glenn Branca (to name a couple). From Television, I became aware of Roky Erikson, John Coltrane, Petula Clark, Brian Jones era Stones, etc. (not to say that I don't always know these artists beforehand....But it sheds new light on them). The backward branches could go on and on.

The sideways/peer branches (Swans, Wipers, Big Black, American Music Club, Dinosaur Jr., Pixies) go on and on and open up their own doors. The follower/influenced branches go on and on as well.

This all amounts to forming a big organism, if you will, that I dub "my musical tastes".

Sometimes I'll take a dive too, and buy something on a whim. Like recently, I picked up a bargain CD by Katell Keineg. It's like a whole other mutation in the genome that I've ignored. It's great stuff, and from her, I discover more great stuff.

Nice seed song there Sky. 

I had some luck with Specials, New York Dolls, and Morphine but almost every song now is golden.

Just got in the bulk of my music order outlined above. Holy crappity crap. Some really great stuff, spent last night giving initial listens with my girl. Couldn't resist jamming along with a lot of it, heh.

First up we did the Allmans, because it's one of our favorite bands. The first two songs were the same as the set when we last saw them in Syracuse, kind of uncanny since this was the original lineup in 1970. Great show, Johnny Winter sits in on the second Mountain Jam. Then we put in another 1970 concert, Fleetwood Mac. The core 3 members were from John Mayall's band (doing that musical exploration Stray is talking about), and this ain't Stevie Nick's Mac. Some great blues with three guitarists jamming along.

Didn't get too far into Johnny Winter's album, since we were a little bluesed out by then, but it's Johnny free of his rock-n-roll style, just doing blues. He's one of my very favorites, since he can channel his shredding in a nice way. Another guy who jammed with the legendary Muddy, which is where I first got turned onto him in the early 80s via a live tape.

Eric Burdon's "covers" album is also great, a very interesting take on some material with War backing him. There's an unfortunate fadeout during a rocking jam on a very funky version of House of the Rising Sun, we both agreed it's a superior version to the original Animals version. I had a great time jamming with this album, let your soul glow and whatnot ;)

The Django Reinhardt with Grappelli album may be my favorite of the bunch, though it's too hard to call with such different genres. Some incredible jazz, almost no vocals on the disc. 25 songs of some of the most amazing guitar playing I've ever heard. I was literally in awe of Django's playing. She said she could hear me in his playing, but I think it was just Django's classical and flamenco leanings, certainly not his superior technique. He's scary good, I highly recommend checking this stuff out if you're a guitarist, though I don't want to sell Grappelli's incredible violin work short, it's some of the greatest non-classical work I've heard.

Didn't have time for ol' Chet, Funkadelic or Otis Taylor's stripped-down blues.

Lt Dan - That Zep track is one of my very favorites, and one of my favorites to jam on guitar. As I've lamented in the guitar thread, I'm very much a minor tonality player. So on songs with minor tonality, I jam ;)

Wanted to say thanks for the link, I decided to really test this thing by starting a station with:
Pantera
Bob Dylan
NOFX

Within an hour I was getting a ratio of about 3:1 like to dislike and hearing some good stuff I dont currently own.

It became almost a game really I would pause the stream if I got up so that I wouldn't miss the chance to dislike/like any upcomming songs.

(http://www.f13.net/images/necropost.gif)

One of the news sites just did a newsbit (http://news.com.com/Pandoras+music+box+inspires+fans/2100-1027_3-6096619.html). I had, in my short internet memory, forgotten about how cool this site is. They've added a lot of material, too.

Necrobump for the music.

My Gnarls Barkley and Mindless Self Indulgence streams have, after some prodding, progressed into all kinds of awesome.  My K-Os stream is still a bit hit or miss, partly because every song he does is so different - and so whichever two or three songs they pick for Pandora will thus completely change the direction of the channel, as opposed to simply finding music that's "like K-Os".

Pandora really seems to work best if you start with an artist that has a consistent, recognizable style.  I've been loving it for about a year now, nonetheless.

Edit:  The news article says it's only seven months old.  Could have sworn it's been longer?

You know what's wierd? A site like this one used to exist called Last FM (url was www.last.fm) but it seems royally borked now, for some reason. It used to do exactly the same thing as pandora, except with no fast forward limit.

There's your answer.  The RIAA had them whacked.

Actually, no. Their downloadable client that allows you to use it without a browser works fine; connects to their database and all. Its just their website that's seriously borked. Although their inclusion of Limp Bizkit when I typed in Tool for my station guide offends me.

Pandora is an algorithmic tool for music discovery, whereas Last.fm is a social tool. Both are useful, and better than contemporary radio, though a knowlegable DJ can outperform either. I eagerly await an Internet DJ with the scope and skill of John Peel, Tommy Vance or even Annie Nightingale. I hold out no hope for programmed music over the radio waves, particularly in the USA.

I find it's better to use songs than artists. Putting in "Turn the Page" by Metallica returns very different results from "Damage Inc."

I'm not sure I like all the more mainstream stuff they've got now. I used to get all these obscure blues artists I'd never heard of, I still get a few but now I get a lot of SRV, Clapton, etc.

Well, sure...it's a cover after all.  I'm guessing you get a lot of stuff that relates to the original as well as Metallica's cover?

This thing is interesting and nifty. I put in "Whole Lotta Rosie", by AC/DC and its coming up with songs that match the song's tempo style but not that focused on traditional metal. First hit was Ben Kweller, who I've never heard of, but it does match the rythmic patterns of the Ac/Dc song. The second was Come As You Are, but not by Nirvana, but by an Elvis impersonator dude, called The King. The pattern seems to be the matching of alternating rythmic styles of the original song, and favoring brassy guitars.

Edit: in an unexpected turn of events, Pandora forwarded a The Cure song as similar to Ac/Dc's song. This is uncanny, since I am one of those wierdos that likes both bands.

i really love this site, my RJD2 search returned this awesome song called Chase Me by Hexstatic. I think when you search mainstream things you get bad results, but if you search some of the weird songs in your library it does a really good job of expanding your tastes with music you otherwise would have never listened to.

I was referring to the difference in the musical "DNA" code that Pandora uses. The music analysts make a list of criteria like time signature, tonality, instrumentation, etc and that's what they match up.

More specifically:

Turn the Page (http://www.pandora.com/music/song/891cf6e81d680309):

pop metal qualities
repetitive melodic phrasing
extensive vamping
minor key tonality
a dirty electric guitar solo
a gravelly male vocalist
narrative lyrics
heavy instrumental improvisation

Damage, Inc. (http://www.pandora.com/music/song/6d530db237cb2e82):

hard rock roots
electric guitar wall-o-sound
repetitive melodic phrasing
extensive vamping
a vocal-centric aesthetic
minor key tonality
a dirty electric guitar solo
a gravelly male vocalist
an aggressive male vocalist
an unintellgible vocal delivery
thrasher drums
angry lyrics
heavy instrumental improvisation

Ah gotcha.  I had forgotten HOW they did the matching.  Still interesting how Metallica reinterpreting another song gets different results, especially the lack of angry lyrics.  Heh, angry lyrics.  That's great.  I'd love to search their DB based solely on that attribute and see what else is included.

I liked "an unintellgible vocal delivery". Speaking of which, what the feg is up with the dominance of the cookie monster metal voice these days? I started a metal stream based on "Battery" by Metallica and it returned a few classics and a ton of cookie monster modern metal. A bit better results with my Mercyful Fate stream.

I still enjoy metal from time to time, until some douche starts croaking out that crap. My very non-metal girlfriend agrees, and it's been keeping her from getting into metal, though she does have a passing like for the old stuff. She said Mercyful Fate reminded her of Guns&Roses :P

Cookie monster vocals are for guys who can't sing or play an instrument, but they have to be in the band because they have a garage/basement in which to practice.

Yeah, I've been in a couple proto-bands with those guys. We turn them down except for their own monitor and ignore them.

My question is why do people buy their albums? By the time I hear them, you don't need their garage anymore. I dunno, I guess I'm old-fashioned thinking a singer should be able to sing. Further, it's not even that, because some guys will sing a chorus or bridge just fine, sometimes they even have the backups doing cookie monster.

It sucks :( Watching an Ozzfest special recently was painful (and they didn't show any BLS!).

Another cool site:

http://www.purevolume.com

It appears to be fairly new as they don't have a lot of stuff up yet. Typical URLs will just be http://www.purevolume.com/'bandname'

ie...

http://www.purevolume.com/wolfmother
http://www.purevolume.com/mychemicalromance


Seems to be mostly harder/heavier stuff.

Delt, thanks for the Wolf Mother.  But in response to the MCR, which is not a good sign, I must pre-emptively warn you...

If you listen to Panic! At the Disco, God hates you.

Uh oh... I just grabbed MCR because it was linked on the homepage and used it as an example. But I do have Panic! on the iPod and will throw it on when I need something meaningless with a somewhat frantic pace.

The new Mars Volta (Amputechture) is facking awesome. Been listenting to that all day.

Other new pickups:
Wolfmother (as mentioned)
Band of Horses (similar to My Morning Jacket or if you want older Neil Young)
Keane (for the wife)
Muse - Black Holes and Revelations that I still have yet to listen to.
Lost Prophets - More generic crap suitable for mindess background music
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Haven't listened yet
Gnarls Barkley - First half of the disc is amazing but for some reason the second half grows tiresome.

Me, I don't listen to popular music so much.  Metalla-who?  Nine inch whats?  What metal was that Zeppelin again?  I just made a couple channels of Techno/Trance: One with Vocals, one without.  Maybe I'll make a classical station next.  If it weren't for Pandora, I'd be spending more time back at Digitally Imported (http://www.di.fm/).

Pandora's great though.  If I had $300 I'd totally get one of these (http://www.pandora.com/squeezenetwork.shtml).

Ooo..new Mars Volta? I wish I could catch their tour with the Chilis this year.

I think their songs were literally written by an algorith that took the MySpace taglines of angsty tweens and spliced them together as best it could.

I WRITE SINS NOT TRAGEDIES!

Stolen? It's not out for weeks yet. September, I heard. On the other hand, maybe you've scored a version before it went off to Masterdisk to be made loud, compressed and short of dynamic range by Howie Weinberg.

You should really listen to it again. Because you couldn't be more wrong.

You can't argue musical taste.

I remember why I stopped using Pandora. After three days of running it here in the office, I had to start a new account on fye.com that's already got about thirty albums on its wishlist (I think 100 is the max, and I've been good about keeping my main account pared down).

Not stolen but recorded off of the stream they had up on their website. Not sure if they still have it up as their official page is now blocked from where I work. I couldn't tell you what state it's in though and whether it's pre or post masterdisk.

Open it in an audio editor, and if it has dynamic peaks it hasn't been to Masterdisk. If on the other hand, its a big block of red with clipping (stuff exceeding the 0db mark and producing a flat line when you zoom in on it) all over the place, Howie has fucked it up already.