Music Genome Project - Cool site

[jwinston2]

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.

[CmdrSlack]

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.

[stray]

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

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.

[CmdrSlack]

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.

[Sky]

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

[Lt.Dan]

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.

[stray]

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.

[Lt.Dan]

Nice seed song there Sky. 

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

[Sky]

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 ;)

[Hoax]

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.

[Sky]

One of the news sites just did a newsbit. 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.

[Telemediocrity]

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?

[Engels]

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.

[Samwise]

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

[Engels]

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.

[Righ]

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.

[Sky]

Pandora really seems to work best if you start with an artist that has a consistent, recognizable style.

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.

[CmdrSlack]

Putting in "Turn the Page" by Metallica

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?

[Engels]

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.

[WindiaN]

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.

[Sky]

Putting in "Turn the Page" by Metallica

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?

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.

[Sky]

More specifically:

Turn the Page:

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.:

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

[CmdrSlack]

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.

[Sky]

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

[CmdrSlack]

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.

[Sky]

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!).

[UD_Delt]

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.

[Telemediocrity]

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.

[UD_Delt]

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.

[geldonyetich]

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.

Pandora's great though.  If I had $300 I'd totally get one of these.

[Sky]

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

[Telemediocrity]

But I do have Panic! on the iPod and will throw it on when I need something meaningless with a somewhat frantic pace.

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!

[Righ]

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

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.

[schild]

But I do have Panic! on the iPod and will throw it on when I need something meaningless with a somewhat frantic pace.

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!

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

[Sky]

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).