Pandora meet up with Tim Westergren

Tonight at the Lakewood, Tim addressed a group of audiophiles about the beginnings of the music genome project. He explained how the algorithms worked with the sets of stations that a user creates. It was really fascinating! Geek Moment. How do they do it??

The short version is, imagine a room filled with a team of people armed with headphones. Each inflection, tonal quality or harmony is recorded on a spreadsheet. This process of categorizing music is similar to binary code. The listener assigns a property based on each song’s musicology. Melody, harmony and rhythm, arrangement and lyrics etc... A pop song can average about 2 minutes, where as a symphony can average 2 hrs of deciphering, all based on the complexity of the categories. Some artists such as Amy Winehouse and Beck are hard to categorize. No surprise, since those two cross genres within songs. Music Mathematics!

Pandora’s goal? Global Radio. De-homogenize Radio. (Can I get an AMEN?!) I really could go on and on.

Fun Fact 1: at this moment Pandora uses a third of the bandwidth YouTube uses.
Fun Fact 2: 3 million users…satellite radio’s days are numbered.

My brain is on overload! Stimulating. We took some video, and once we edit it down, I will post some niblets.