Create Your Own Radio Station

[Arlette]

Is this old news?  I've just discovered this:
 
 http://www.pandora.com/
 
 You put in the name of an artist or song and they create a playlist based on your choice.  It really works.  I entered Secret Machines and I've got some great selections so far.  They did have one miss (some emo band I've never heard), but I clicked "Don't like it" and it went away.

[vansmack]

There was an earlier post, but it received little fanfare as well.
 
  http://www.930.com/cgi-bin/ubb-cgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=011767
 
 I read a review in WIRED about this and another music recommending web site.  I don't recall what they said though.

[Sage 703]

I continue to think its one of the best music websites that I have ever seen.

[Arlette]

I agree.  This is so cool.  I've already discovered a couple of artists I want to learn more about.  And it's so easy to use.  I don't know if it's Flash or what, but the way they present everythig is great, and so fast (unusual for a Flash site).  
 
 I can create so many different stations with different genres.  Perfect for work and I get to discover new music too.  
 
 I'm loving it.

[vansmack]

Well, then you'll be pleased to know that last week they secured a large amount of VC funding.
 
 Here's the article I was referencing:
 
  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/play_pr.html
 
 PLAY|music
 
 What you need is a savvy friend who knows the Kills from the Killers from Killing Joke. What you have is Amazon, which knows only that people who bought X also bought Y. This leaves you listening to what everyone else is listening to - unless you seek out a music recommendation service. Using varied approaches (AI, metadata, the expertise of musicologists), these advisers help you develop the taste you want people to think you already had.
 
 How to Find Songs You'll Like
 
 Pandora
 We Dig: Cathartic rock bands like Wilco
 Pandora suggested: Son Volt, Violent Femmes, the Thrills
 
 How it works: You seed the Web-based player with a tune you like, and the database serves up songs that share qualities you appear to enjoy. (Pandora employs 30 music analysts, who scrutinize 400 attributes - like melody, rhythm, and vocals - of tracks from 10,000-plus artists.) Then you give thumbs-up/thumbs-down feedback to fine-tune Pandora's picks.
 www.pandora.com ; free 10-hour trial (then $36 per year)
 
 MusicStrands
 We Dig: Bands that kick ass like the Pixies
 MusicStrands suggested: Queens of the Stone Age,
 Modest Mouse, the Libertines
 
 How it works: Create playlists on the site, organize your songs with tags (think Flickr or del.icio.us), and get suggestions from a catalog of 5 million songs. Or download the plug-in for iTunes, which chooses music similar to what you're playing.
 www.musicstrands.com ; free
 
 Soundflavor
 We Dig: Lyrical content about general happiness, delivered in angry or defiant tones
 Soundflavor suggested: "Perfectly Happy," by the Ataris
 
 How it works: Soundflavor combines user ratings with details like harmonic and rhythmic elements, production, arrangement, and lyrical content. Search its 182,000 songs by tempo (lethargic versus manic), subject, or instrument (cowbell, anyone?) and listen to 30-second clips.
 www.soundflavor.com ; free
 
 Last.FM
 We dig: Brazilian popster Seu Jorge
 Last.fm suggested: Mark Mothersbaugh, Sven Libaek, the Zombies - all on The Life Aquatic soundtrack with Jorge
 
 how it works: As you listen to music, Last.fm's plug-in (which works with most audio players) adds songs to your profile. Then, using "probabilistic latent semantic analysis," it builds a radio station based on what other users with parallel profiles are listening to. The site has 200,000 tracks, thousands of which are available for free (legal) download.
 www.last.fm ; free (or upgrade for $3 per month)
 
 - Greta Lorge

[Sage 703]

The thing that I really like about it is that you can put in the obscure bands that you love, and then it can find even more obscure things.  Its just as good for people who are putting in Godspeed You Black Emperor into their radio station as it is for people putting in the Rolling Stones.

Define: 'EXTENSIVE VAMPING'
 
      <img src="http://www.jossip.com/gossip/200505_mariah_carey.jpg" alt=" - " />
 
 BTW, if you like Hawkwind, then you'll just love LOVERBOY?  WTF???

[Jaguar]

MSN has/had this type of radio going for years and years and I assume still does. I use to play with it all the time about 5 years ago but for some reason haven't bothered with it in ages. I liked it a lot but it did have it's weaknesses but nothing worse than you'd find with any other radio station or music program. One of the things that I like about it so much is that you can easily skip songs you don't like or are not in the mood for. The other thing is that it identifies the music and the artists and gives you leads as to how to buy it. Of course, that is also one of it's weaknesses as it's not going to play something it can't sell. (I'm talking about the MSN version which I'm more experienced with.) Some stations, such as those on Live 365, that give leads will still play those kinds of cuts regardless. Like I said, all stations and programs will have their downsides like anything else.
 
 If you know how to look for it, there is so much out there online that will provide you with the music you would like to hear without ever having to depend on crappy terrestrial radio ever again. The catch is that we're stuck with when and where we can access online listening.
 
 There use to be another program that was pretty good that I use to use too but the fucking RIAA eventually killed them off once they demanded large sums of cash in protection fees. Think it was called Spinner. Someone then took them over and changed the name and then I think it quickly vanished off the highway. With that said, there are still tons and tons of different ways of finding halfway decent online listening if you have some clue of how to find it which really isn't that hard to find.
 
 A lot of people don't want to bother but there is a whole lot more out there than WOXY. I found what seemed to be a pretty cool Psychobilly station the other week, except that it wasn't on the air at the time. Unfortunately, that happens a lot but there is always someone else out there to pick up the slack. That Psychobilly station led to a pretty intensive forum for those fans which made me realize that scene is much stronger than I had realized. Thought that was pretty cool. I love playing around with some of these odd ball stations sometimes because you often end up stumbling across all kinds of little semi-precious gems.

[bellenseb]

Spinner became Radio@Netscape and for a long time employed the same music programmers. Their indie streams were *brilliant*. Then about a year ago they sacked all the old, SF-based programmers and installed relatively clueless people.
 
 Michele Flannery, head indie programmer at the old Spinner/Radio@Netscape, is now programming the New Indie stream at Rhapsody Radio, which is $5 a month, but worth it for me because our tastes always magically coincide and I hear so many great new bands.

[Arlette]

Originally posted by Jaguar:
  MSN has/had this type of radio going for years and years and I assume still does.  

I totally hear you and I've listened to online services for along time.  Here's why I think this one is a little different:  they don't "suggest" artists based on who else bought the music (Amazon), or genre (everyone else).  Here's what they say about it:
 
 "It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.
 
 Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. "
 
 I guess this appeals to me more than the other services because I am a song person.  It's rare that I like an entire album.  This service is choosing songs, not artists, that are similar to something I already like.

[wxdude]

Just tried it out, and I think it's great!  Entered Josh Rouse for the artist, and have heard some great stuff (Teenage Fanclub, Meat Puppets, Ron Sexsmith, Guided By Voices, The Sea And The Cake and Creeper Lagoon) just to name a few.

[Jaguar]

Okay, since I posted above, I decided to rexplore the MSN radio. Very sorry to say that it's nothing at all like it use to be and now almost sucks. Especially in comparison to what they use to have. What they have now is very linear. You can only follow their one little path but you can skip along it if you want. You do have several genres to choose from but most would not be the least bit appealing to most of us.
 
 The older version was much, much more web-like in the sense that you could easily select the path you wanted and change at any given time as it had that sounds like feature to it. Also, you could save the songs you wanted on your personal playlist. Sort of like Last.FM yet different. I use to find all kinds of good music that way that I had never heard.
 
 Oh, well. Just like so much else in cyberspace; easy come, easy go.

[Bags]

Originally posted by bellenseb:
  Spinner became Radio@Netscape and for a long time employed the same music programmers. Their indie streams were *brilliant*.

I LOVED Spinner, and listened to Radio@Netscape for a while, but just kind of stopped.
 
 I'm digging this Pandora so much because you can skip to the next song.  Fabulous.  So far the only song (of only six, granted) I didn't know was The Bevis Frond.  Other bands have been Dukes of the Stratosphere, Teenage Fanclub and three Sloan tracks.     [I put in Sloan to start out!}

[chaz]

The only one they screwed up for me was a Misfits station.  It starts off with a version of "teenagers from mars"  from some album of elevator music covers of misfits songs and it just went downhill from there...
 
 I did discover The Clean..."stars" is a great song.  Can anyone familiar with that band  tell me where to start with them?

[Bags]

It's fun to click on "Why did you play this song" -- I did that for Loudermilk, and the bubble told me:  Based on what you've told us, we're playing this because it features a subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rythmic syncopation, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, a distinctive male vocal and many other similarities identified in the music genome project.