Pandora

Thirteen years ago, Carl Malamud created the first internet radio station, dubbed Internet Talk Radio. Since the inception of internet radio, many traditional terrestrial stations have begun to broadcast their streams online. Additionally a great number of internet-only radio stations. The next generation of internet radio is upon us. For the first time, users can have their own custom radio stations.

The technology used for the free service, dubbed Pandora, is based on work completed by the Music Genome Project. The Music Genome Project was created in January of 2000 to "capture the essence of music at a fundamental level." The group assembled hundreds of musical attributes, or "genes" as project members like to refer to them, which compose the genome of a song. In the last five years, the group has listened to the audio properties of over ten-thousand songs.

Project members believe that by comparing songs with similar musical attributes, users will be able to find music that they will most likely enjoy but have never heard before.

Pandora, is available at http://www.pandora.com/. The flash-based software asks users to enter in artists or songs they enjoy, and then it will play songs similar to the ones entered. For example, if a user would enter something such as "The Postal Service," Pandora would play songs from similar bands such as "Death Cab for Cutie." Users can then further define the music they enjoy by indicating whether or not they like a specific song Pandora selects to play to the user, until Pandora has a good idea of what the user enjoys and does not enjoy.