by Bill Singer
A customized, online radio station to help you all chill out
May 16, 2008
Like I said a few blog posts back, before the nonsense with Lt. Col. Johnson, I'm tired. Tired of fighting with FINRA and its cronies, and seemingly doing so all by my lonesome. Sure, a lot of you say that you have my back, but when I turn around, all that I usually see is folks standing way behind me, waving, smiling, egging me on from a safe distance. So, with all due respect, it's time for Bill Singer to take a breather and hang up the six guns and put his feet up on the desk, kick back, and chill. When I decide whether to ride out of town into the sunset or slap the iron back on and walk the streets, you'll know -- I'll post that decision here.
For now, I'm just taking it easy. As some of you know, I love music. As a younger guy, I was in a number of rock and roll bands. Electric guitars. The long hair (even the pony tail). Lots of loud noise and, thankfully, didn't quit my day job.
In any event, while rambling and ambling around the Internet this morning, I came upon this cool site. You enter some favorite songs or bands, and they have some computer profile that pulls together a personalized online radio station. Frankly, some of the stuff that randomly played was neat (yeah, I'm from the '60s and I send greetings to you from that long ago civilization). Forgot about some songs. Forgot about some bands. Smiled when I realized that a software program was uncannily picking out playlists that I would have too.
Here's the link: http://pandora.com
Enjoy it.
For the curious among you, here's what the site says is going on:
The Music Genome Project®
On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.
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. 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.
Since we started back in 2000, we've carefully listened to the songs of tens of thousands of different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.
It has been quite an adventure, you could say a little crazy - but now that we've created this extraordinary collection of music analysis, we think we can help be your guide as you explore your favorite parts of the music universe.
We hope you enjoy the journey.
Tim Westergren
Founder
The Music Genome Project