Find New Music with Pandora

I think I’m a little late on this one, but Lindsay sent along a link to Pandora. It’s a very simple app: you enter a song or band you like, and it plays other (generally newer) music in a similar vein:

We take your input (artists, songs) and feedback (“I like this”, “I don’t like this”) and use the Music Genome Project to create stations that play songs that are musically similar to what you’ve told us. That’s it; only the music counts. We don’t care how popular the artist is, who’s backing them, and we don’t care which genre bin they usually belong in. Only the music matters.

Does this music discovery service work? Pretty well, I guess. I tried the Stars, and Pandora suggested Puffy AmiYumi, The Monolith and Irving, all of which sound Stars-esque. I tried the Cowboy Junkies, and the first six songs Pandora suggested were in the ballpark, but all had male vocalists. Here’s a positive review from TechCrunch.

The more important question, though, is: would I pay for it? They’re charging US $3/month or $36/year. I might try it for a month or so, assuming I had enough free brain cycles to pay attention to what it was playing. I’d like to see a more granular rating system, and a better reporting mechanism. At the end of the month, I’d like to request a list with links to my top-ten rated new bands.

Another thing–the service is currently ‘invite-only’. I put quotes around that term, because everyone I know who has requested an invitation has received one. I wouldn’t have, had I not been told this by somebody else. Invititation only Web projects are idiotic–why would you risk turning away potential customers? If it’s a bandwidth issue, then run a private, closed beta until it’s ready for primetime.