Hey I work at Pandora as an engineer! So Let me know if you have any questions.
Actually Pandora started out as a payed subscription service. After a while we just set "what the heck" and switched to ad supported free. No plans to go back to payed any time soon.
I've been pushing them to add more modern gypsy jazz stuff. Heck maybe I should just donate my collection.
Django Reinhardt usually brings up some Lang/Venuti, Grapelli, and old jazz like Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. We have one Bireli Lagrene album: Move... usually just brings up modern jazz matches... which is understandable, but it could defintiely use more real gypsy jazz!
Pandora radio stations are based on the work of the Music Genome Project. We're still a relatively small company in Oakland, CA, USA.
In a nutshell, we have a room full of trained musicians listening to every song you hear on Pandora and rating them in over 400 musical traits. Stuff like key, tempo, chord structure, etc. (as well as some more complex features like lyrical content, mood, sound quality/production)
Then we have some algorithms that crunch this data and tries to find the "nearest musical neighbors" to the artists you specify and play them in a radio-like playlist.
So, technically, nobody actually writes the descriptions of each song. Those descriptions are generated from the metadata that we have from each song based on careful analysis.
Wow! After someone mentioned that Jimmy Rosenberg was on there, I discovered that they added all my recommendations after all!
I'm happy to report that Jimmy Rosenberg (the one and only), John Jorgenson (FA swing), and Fapy Laftertin (Fine and Dandy), Romane (French Gutiar), Rosenberg Trio (Live At The North Sea Jazz Festival '92) have all been added to Pandora. Try making some stations from those.
Coming soon: Angelo Debarre (Come into my swing)
Here is the link to my "Gypsy Jazz Radio" station its pretty spot on!
Comments
Thanks for the link
Josh
wow.
Actually Pandora started out as a payed subscription service. After a while we just set "what the heck" and switched to ad supported free. No plans to go back to payed any time soon.
I've been pushing them to add more modern gypsy jazz stuff. Heck maybe I should just donate my collection.
Django Reinhardt usually brings up some Lang/Venuti, Grapelli, and old jazz like Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. We have one Bireli Lagrene album: Move... usually just brings up modern jazz matches... which is understandable, but it could defintiely use more real gypsy jazz!
In a nutshell, we have a room full of trained musicians listening to every song you hear on Pandora and rating them in over 400 musical traits. Stuff like key, tempo, chord structure, etc. (as well as some more complex features like lyrical content, mood, sound quality/production)
Then we have some algorithms that crunch this data and tries to find the "nearest musical neighbors" to the artists you specify and play them in a radio-like playlist.
So, technically, nobody actually writes the descriptions of each song. Those descriptions are generated from the metadata that we have from each song based on careful analysis.
I'm happy to report that Jimmy Rosenberg (the one and only), John Jorgenson (FA swing), and Fapy Laftertin (Fine and Dandy), Romane (French Gutiar), Rosenberg Trio (Live At The North Sea Jazz Festival '92) have all been added to Pandora. Try making some stations from those.
Coming soon: Angelo Debarre (Come into my swing)
Here is the link to my "Gypsy Jazz Radio" station its pretty spot on!
http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh20100287