Posted on July 6, 2006 at 2:45 PM in @earthlink
Note: The below is an archived entry from Earthling, formerly EarthLink's official blog. The blog itself has been decommissioned and is no longer updated, and comments are trackbacks are no longer accepted.
Just before I left for Anaheim, we launched the first phase of a new partnership with Pandora. In case you don't know what that is, it's a music player and music discovery system rolled in to one. The discovery part has some really interesting smarts behind it, employing a blend of human listening and computery algorithms to help you find music that's similar to the specific songs and artists you like. As far as free ways to listen to and discover new music via the web, Pandora is really the best game in town, and I'm excited that we've brought them to myEarthLink.
Our Pandora application (officially myEarthLink Radio powered by Pandora) lives in the music subchannel of the entertainment channel. Look for "myEarthLink Radio" at the top of the page. Type in a song or artist, follow the prompts to set up an account, and let me know what you think of the experience.
We're still working out a few last kinks, most notably that if you already have a login from Pandora itself(pre-EarthLink partnership), it won't work on the myEarthLink version -- or it didn't when I tested it earlier today, anyway. If that happens to you, just create a new login when it asks you to. We're addressing that, and also making it so that you can try Pandora right off the bat without having to create a login. The login is free, but we want you to be able to give it a shot with no more forms to fill out, and as soon as you reach the page. And more importantly, we're working on better and deeper integration into the myEarthLink portal, so that you can get to it from a widget on your home page. Our ultimate goal is to bring the functionality of Pandora into our personal start page experience so that you don't have to go elsewhere to use it.
Read on for more about what it is.
Steve Krause wrote a great comparison between Pandora and music community Last.FM back in February. LastFM works by letting you see and benefit from the playlists of others. Pandora, on the other hand, uses a database called the Music Genome Project to ferret out music that's structurally similar to your songs but not necessarily recommended as similar based on a human's playlist.
I've always liked Pandora better for that reason. Often times, to me, music fans get stuck in genres and are unlikely to recommend stuff that's out of their fashion sense or taste palette, even though stripped of the coolness component lots of music might actually appeal to them. So if I ask someone in person to recommend music that's similar to what I like, they may shy away from what they consider lame or embarassing types of music though it might be something I'd totally be in to. Robots come in handy for information exchanges like this.
In April, Pandora started supporting data from Last.FM users, and as far as I know they still do, so you can get some of the benefits of both in one place.
I've been using Pandora for a couple of years, since just before my days at HowStuffWorks. I participated in some of the public-ish beta testing, and back then I lobbied for a How Pandora Works article. It looks like they've got one now. If you want to know more about, well, how it actually works, that would be a great place to start. Pandora also has its own blog. I'll add it to the links on the right.
Comments
It's raining here in Tucson now and that is not the most normal of happenings! It;s 3:30 or so in the morn[ng and sleep has deserted me so I wandering around my computer looking for company and found this, whatever it is!
Posted by Hal Ethridge | July 7, 2006 6:43 AM
Good stuff. I have been looking for a launchcast alternative and this could be it. One early issue is that I would love to see when the album was released - something that Pandora does not post.
Posted by Steve | July 7, 2006 10:24 AM
Good idea, Steve. One way you can get that info is through a function they have called backstage ( http://www.pandora.com/backstage ) where you can research artists, albums, and songs. It's a link on the top right of the player.
Posted by Dave Coustan | July 7, 2006 1:14 PM
I think that you nshould also include your technology to all the others, such as yahoo, since I can,t seem to work with their programs, because they want to ask for money first and don't let you do more than listen to more than 30 seconds of each album, before you get cut off. That is one reason that I still keep my earthlink account open, also msn has no good music either, so why don't you try to expand further and wipe out all the other guys that think they know what they are doing. I truly think that you all are awsome at the professional level and thanks for your concern, about what real people would like to listen to and also I keep trying to make a mix of my own, but you mix my music for me and I really enjoy the way that it all comes together. I also have another e-mail address ite is crmfnc@earthlink.net.
Posted by Bill Koble | October 18, 2006 11:40 PM