I'm pretty late on posting about this, but I figure what the hey, someone out there may not yet have stumbled upon the wonder that is Pandora. The Music Genome Project created this incredible website to help people discover more music they loved, based on the artists they already loved. Sure, it seems like an obvious concept, and there have been some more simple versions that appeared on the web before, but Pandora takes it all a step further by actually creating "radio stations" with streaming audio for you based on your selection of a favorite artist.
For example, I picked The Decemberists as a favorite artist of mine, and it automatically selects a bunch of other random songs based on similar music qualities that describe The Decemberists. So you think to yourself, "Why the heck did you pick this to put in my Decemberists radio station??" And they answer, "Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features a subtle use of vocal harmony, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, major key tonality, acoustic rhythm guitars and many other similarities identified in the music genome project." Oh, well you got me there...! The cool thing is, from there you can let them know if they picked well or picked poorly, and they'll continue to personally customize your radio stations to adjust to your tastes. It's quite brilliant in an almost-stalkery way.
According to the FAQ, the peeps at the Music Genome Project have "carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time." Ummm, well thanks guys. That saved me a lot of time.
Anyway, it's definitely a great way to discover new music, hear some old favorites, and kind of have a fun little music adventure along the way!
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