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Dissecting Songs Down to Their 'Musical Genome'
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The company Pandora Media takes a different tack for its online music-recommendation service. When you tell Pandora a song you like or have bought, it doesn't mine its sales database for records of other purchases by those who have bought the song. Instead, it looks for songs with a similar musical profile, based on a database of 300,000 songs rated on up to 400 characteristics like rhythmic syncopation, vamping and vocal harmonies. To analyze the songs, Pandora has hired Bay Area musicians like San Francisco jazz guitarist Bob Coons. 'When Mr. Coons describes a particular song, he uses phrases like the "complexity of the chromaticism" and "richness of the harmonic structure." He has studied the chord structure in Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again," and reports that it is "actually fairly complex," ' the Wall Street Journal Online reports."
This is one of the signs of the apocalypsis
What if I like both eighties hair metal and symphonic orchestra? I guess it's okay to reccomend songs from each of those categories, but as the number of preferences rises, wouldn't it become harder and harder to pick even a specific genre to reccomend, much less a specific album?
..... Those weren't "Chords" that you were admiring.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
Google ads work in almost this exact same fashion.
Rejoice.
The CB App. What's your 20?
If "Oops I Did It Again" is considered complex, I'm not sure if this service is for me. Outside of the obvious whiskey-tango-foxtrot question, do you really want to see Britney Spears recommended since you listen to complex orchestral themes?
...like "sounds like a kid banging on pots in the kitchen".
"It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps guide the world."
Complex like the lacing of bruises left after a full frontal lobotomy with an ice pick.
There is a commercial service that does similar analysis on songs to provide a score based on similar genetic algorithms. As I recall you can upload your own music, and for a nominal fee they will provide the analysis. Apparently many music publishers use this service to find songs from new artists that have a higher propobility of success (wide acceptance). I just don't remember the service, but read about it on-line just a year or two ago...
Suncoast Linux - Sarasota, FL
Brittanny spears did not write Oops I did it again. She re-recorded a 1932 B-side Louis armstrong recording. That was written in the hey day of 8-count jazz and swing. No wonder it might show some complex structure in a day when 4/4 is all she wrote.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Mr. Coon, you're not gettin' any from Britney anyway, she's married, you can be honest here. Don't need to syncopate her.
Oops I did it again, I assumed stars were monogomous.
My ZooLoo
This is the Internet. No need to try to show off your musical taste by reflexively bashing Britney Spears.
why is it that he elitists believe popular music is simplistic? If it's so simplistic and dumb why doesnt everyone make it and become millionaires? Fact is not everyone is able to come up with music and lyrics that a wide audience connects with and appreciates. Unless you have talent, it may look easy but it's not.
It's early, but I might as well announce it.. flotsm.com: Generates 'tokens' akin to MaxiCode based on file content; MP3, PNG, GIF, what have you, colorized/formatted according to file characteristics (file format, bpm, size/resolution, etc) You can match existing 'tokens' for material you like against a database of potentially similar material. The 'token' has a sample of the data stored steganographically, so it's playable, viewable, etc.
If you can show fundamental identity of components (aka musical dna) of a musical work at what point will you be able to say one of these two pieces is infringing on the IP of the other!
It would be interesting to see technology like this at a local level. For instance, being able to tell WinAmp or iTunes that I want to hear songs that are similar in tempo / dynamic range as a particular song.
Or even the ability to sort my personally owned music by it's musical characteristics in order to build play lists of similar music.
He has studied the chord structure in Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again," and reports that it is "actually fairly complex,"
He also reports that the chort structure in Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby One More Time" is also "fairly complex".
I typed in "dog shit" and got Ashlee Simpson's entire catalog! This thing is amazing!
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
I'm a musician, and I told it some songs I liked and it's playing a customized radio station of songs that I should like... and it's dead on.
The best part is that you can ask it "Why are you playing this song", and it will explain it to you.. in terms of the song structure and things like that.
These are real people analyzing these songs.. this seems like a great service to find new music from bands you don't know. Taking bands out of the context of a "social circle" (like Amazon and itunes do by simply looking at 'people who purchased this also purchased...') is a GREAT idea.
I urge you to support this project if you are a music lover, or at least check it out and listen for a couple hours.
I tried this out a month or two ago when a friend recommended it. It actually does a decent job at finding other groups/styles you might like. You basically give it a seed song/group, then it will branch out from there. Based on whether you give the songs it feeds you a thumbs up or thumbs down, it tries to build up a list of common musical traits, which it then uses to feed you more. At any time, you can click a link that will show you why it suggested a certain song (midtempo, mild syncopation, breathy female vocals, minor key bridge, etc). It's worth taking a look at. I dunno if I'd ever pay them for the service though.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
and classified the DNA of songs using Markov chains (like people do with umm, DNA) they could have saved themselves money and time.
In a couple minutes of playing around with it, I have to say I'm pretty impressed. The first couple groups I put in it didn't know, but when I put Delerium in, it picked out one of the newer Delerium songs I liked and has continued to pick a stream of songs I like.
I'm impressed. Particularly since the songs it picked are either songs in very different genres or songs I haven't heard of and liked.
Is it really necessary to categorize and break everything down into it's component peices.
I'm all for it in the computer world, but do we really want to do this with Music? How about food?
I can see it now - recipes for food that are just a list of nutrients. MMMMmmmm.
Remember, "complex" != "good"
"Yes, do continue ..." invited the RIAA executive.
"Oh ... and er ... interesting rhythmic devices too," continued Coons, "which seemed to counterpoint the ... er ... er ..." He floundered.
Ford leaped to his rescue, hazarding "counterpoint the complexity of the underlying chromaticism of the ... er ..." He floundered too, but Coons was ready again.
"... humanity of the ..."
"RIAAnanity," Ford hissed at him.
"Ah yes, RIAAnanity (sorry) of the singer's publicity-whored-out soul," Coons felt he was on a home stretch now, "which contrives through the richness of the harmonic structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other," (he was reaching a triumphant crescendo ...) "and one is left with a profound and vivid insight into ... into ... er ..." (... which suddenly gave out on him.) Ford leaped in with the coup de grace:
"Into whatever it was the song was about!"
The RIAA executive stood up.
"No, well you're completely wrong," he said, "I just write top 40 music to throw my mean callous heartless exterior into sharp relief. I'm going to throw you off the ship anyway. Guard! Take the prisoners to number three airlock and throw them out!"
"...counterpoint the complexity of the underlying chromaticism..." He considered this for a moment, and then unplugged the iVog with a grim smile. "Death's too good for them," he said.
O Woops! That was supposed to go to my therapist.
antipaucity
This is the first musical taste-type service I've tried that has gotten anywhere close to accurate. In fact, I've found around 10 of the last 15 or so rather likeable. And they have the Dance Hall Crashers listed, which is a great sign.
As to questions about "what if you like both foo and bar styles?" You start with one song or band, and it makes a "channel" out of that type. If you want to explore a different genre, I assume you start over.
It's also full songs, decent quality.
Overall, pretty nice.
I tried this out yesterday. It offered me the same "if you like, you'd like..." stuff as Amazon does. Not really impressed.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Bow only if the complexity or anything could be found to have relevance on the enjoyability of a song... I'd rather listen to the Ramones than Be Bop wanker jazz, or for that matter, Brittany Spears.
I have freaks! I did something right...
they've lost a potential customer if i have to turn off popup blocking just to view the site
See my comment here. it's originally the the B-side of All-of-me sung by Louis Armstrong and shrek baker in 1932.
I wonder if the music genome machine will pull up and other louis armstrong as a match.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Have they patented the software?
I'm predicting search companies (i.e.: Google, Yahoo) will be buying this, making it a new search for music! - I like the concept.
-Fatman
...but Musical Genome, I don't think so... This is merely picking out songs from similar genres with similar characteristics. It's not evolutionary genetics... Geeze!
I have been using this service for about 2 months, and I have been very very happy with it. It has a free trial and you dont even have to enter an email address. If you like music I recomend giving this a try.
The scottish post-rock band Travis has done an acoustic cover of "Oops I did it again" in concert. You can find it if you look - it's very good.
Artists are constantly being influenced by other artists, how far does this go? Does it go to the point of some song that has similarities to a previous one (according to some database) is not artistic or original? Is it okay to play more than 2, 3, 4 of the same notes in the same sequence as another song without being attacked for infringement?
Why stop at music? Why not go into visual arts as well? They too have too many similarities that can not be overlooked.
At this logic, Claude Monet, Pierre Renoir, and Camille Pissarro are all are frauds for influencing each other. Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne also are fraudulent because one of them had to be influencing the other's style. Let's get in touch with their ancestors and see if they will pay up.
PS The only thing complex about Britney Spears is her relationship with former boyfriends and the media
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
OK, so they're assigning tags to songs, weighting the importance of those tags, and recommending songs that we may like due to characteristics that may normally be ignored.
Cool.
A problem -- there is no way they will be hiring enough professionals to grade every song out there that I might be interested in. If they get a sufficient following, I see labels paying to have their songs indexed... good luck to the independent musicians out there.
I would hope that they allow people to assign their own weights to different criteria. This is a major problem with most of the automated referral systems. The "people who have bought this also bought X" model doesn't work for me, because my tastes are different from most people... or so I'd like to believe.
What I'd like to see is a cross-genre analysis of the music that is reviewed. I don't like Pop Country -- so how do I find the Bluegrass I want without weeding through what I consider to be junk?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Where are my mod points when I need them?!?
Bravo!
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
"They call him Maurice, because he speaks of the pompitous of love"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Dr. Stephen Wolfram has been doing a similar type of research using his "A New Kind of Science".
Wolfram Tones
WolframTones works by taking simple programs from Wolfram's computational universe, and using music theory and Mathematica algorithms to render them as music. Each program in effect defines a virtual world, with its own special story--and WolframTones captures it as a musical composition.
Dollar Highway Financial News
"Dissecting Songs Down to Their 'Musical Genome'"
Or the alternate title, "God I'm really, really, REALLY bored."
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I've used this pretty extensively and find it does a much better job recommending music than other services. You do need to start with an artist, but it will create a station that has surprising similarities. What I found most striking about the service is that around 3/4 of what it recommended was new to me, which almost never happens with other services. When an artist is really unique, it can come up with some great recommendations. For artists that aren't identifiably unique, its recommendations don't usually capture the magic that made you like that artist though.
Not to worry. You'd be hard pressed to find anything played by a symphonic orchestra in their database. No Tchaikovsky, no Beethoven, no Rimsky-Korsakov... Once again, we fans of dead white guys get left out in the cold.
"Folks bent on reinventing the wheel should understand that if it's not round, it ain't a wheel." - Jonah Goldberg
Some tards can't read either. No where in the origial post does it say Louis armstrong sang it. It says was recorded by Louis Armstrong.
Mod funny, but not informative. Some people just don't get a joke.
That site says:
Vocals: Shek Baker
Trumpet: Kurt Stockdale
Music: Chris Messick
IE: "We're just pretending it's Louis Armstrong, we really did it."
Only more sphisticated. Several things going on here. It would be wonderful to have the scoring of these songs as played. They you could indeed feed them into Markov models and analyze them. One of the DB admins here did that sort of thing with classical music for his MA years ago with Mozart, Bach, etc. The resultant composer recognizers could correctly identify pieces that were not part of the training sets.
This sort of analysis might be used in copyright infringment cases as well as looking for new artists.
Shred me please.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
You cannot use the Pandora site AT ALL unless you allow popups and Javascript.
No, thank you. If you cannot make your site degrade gracefully and use normal HTML for this, then I guess I won't be using your site.
www.eFax.com are spammers
"He has studied the chord structure in Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again," and reports that it is "actually fairly complex,"
I'm not all that surprised really. I don't care for her music but that's personal taste. While I can't speak for her songwriting ability, I do think she has a talented voice. Sadly, too many people think that simply because they do not like something it must suck and anyone who does like it must be stupid. This phenomenon pervades much more of our culture than just music - art and politics being two other big areas where this elitism is polarizing society at an alarming rate.
Try the site: http://www.pandora.com/
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
I put in "Weird Al", First they gave me "I lost on Jeopardy", then the Kinks with "In a Foreign Land", now it's the Rembrandts - "Just the way it is, Baby".
While I can see the similarities in syncopation and tone and music feel, it doesn't match the lyrics or the feel of the song. When I'm in a "Weird Al" mood, it's not a Rembrandts mood. The Kinks, maybe.
Ok, now it's "Tears in the Rain" by Triumph....uh guys...not really...
It's a novelty. If anything it can give you a jumping off point for finding new bands. It might actually be better served in the "Indie" community. Give them the well known band you like, and it gives you all the related Indie music. That I would like.
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
sorry for the lame attempt at humour
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Best. Parody. Ever.
Bravo! Bravo!
Life is short: void the warranty.
It's a joke. ^_^ Then again, after the whole Amish Paradaise, Gangsta Paradise, Pastime Paradise debacle, it's not that unreasonable. Heck, I almost modded you informative without doing the fact checking...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
NO TEXT!
click me
Anyway what I was trying to say that there is in fact some GOOD pop out there now and then. If you want to see the talent behind Britney, you need to look at the names of the producers, engineers, song-writers and musicians on the record. The thing I find most disturbing is the, um, let's call it the "racial dimension", especially in the US where music is sickeningly segregated by colour.
Anyway, miles off-topic, we now return you, etc etc. Sheessh. Does anyone else find Friday evenings profoundly depressing?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Vamp: (musical) To perform a cyclical musical sequence, allowing musicians to expand on the basic form.
At any rate, I'm impressed. I used to use Amazon to find similar music, but that doesn't really work. If you put in an MTV2 metal band, all the "People who bought this also bought..." links are to more MTV2 metal bands. It's hard to break out of the mainstream.
This, on the other hand, pulled up a bunch of bands that I'm pretty sure don't get commercial *radio play*, much less MTV exposure. Unforetunately, I don't have audio here at work, so I can't speak to the quality of the matches just yet, but I'm sure I'll find something I like that I've never heard of.
Who the @#$@#$@# put Rick Springfield on my Steely Dan station?
That's just not right. I think my ears just ran off looking for a new home.
-Tupshin
This is something I've been waiting for, for quite a while now. I like a lot of different types of music. I also don't have the time or opportunity to really sample a ton of different artists to find more music I like. The closest I've been able to find is various mp3 stream stations & just make notes of what they're playing. Unfortunately the ones I've become rather accustomed to, don't seem to rotate in new music fairly often.
The only drawback I've found so far is that they database is still growing, as such a number of tunes I put in, weren't found.
There's only one real thing holding me back from subscribing right now, and that's that it's just too good to be true - I'm pretty sure it'll get killed by the RIAA or something fairly soon. I even sighed a bit of disappointment when I saw this posted here on slashdot.
...but Britney Spears songs is written and/or arranged by very professionals, and 'Hit Me Babe One More Time' is quite serious work, if we look at chords and how they can be interpreted.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
This reminds me a lot of a research project I worked on years ago... Evolutionary Music and the Zipf-Mandlebrot Law. Our conclusion back then was that a computer can tell you if music is "pleasant". We didn't want to use 'good' or 'bad' because that would lead to a lot of arguments based on taste, not music.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
No Mozart. And if they don't have Mozart, you *know* they won't have anything by dead white guys.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I'm reminded of the Barenaked Ladies song "It's All Been Done" (or something like that).
It really has though. We've had "complex" music with chordal progressions for 500+ years now and there's only so many way to play a G major then a D major then a C major chord. There's probably 1,000,000+ ASCAP songs with just those 3 chords and perhaps an E minor thrown in for good measure.
That's fine though. I'm a musician and I love music first and foremost because it's fun and aurally stimulating. Way behind in 2nd is the science behind it, but even that is interesting because there's so much good juicy physics (yeah I'm a geek!).
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
My favorite part is the end where he references K.C. Sunshine for the song of the least complexity, "That's the way (uh-uh uh-uh) I like it".
Queen teamed up with David Bowie today in suing Vanilla Ice yet again, citing newfound evidence to bring to the case..
Problem is, it's moderated to the limit already. We would need people to Overrate it and then mod it back up.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
No, seriously, it did. I wonder if it would be possible to tune the station based on selecting the genomes, as it were, asking for "hard guitar" or perhaps "more thumpin' percussion" or even a range of dates of publication - I'm not into mixing Zappa with Pearl Jam.
Evil Overlord Rule #86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
If you tell it you like 80's hair metal and symphonic orchestra, maybe it will recommend Yngwie Malmsteen and G'NR's "November Rain"?
I think he must have meant the "facial contortions" were actually fairly complex when listening to the Brittney Spears song.
...these aren't the chords you're looking for...
(capcha="captive"... how do they know I'm at work?)
Update: Styx "Great White Hope" came up because it had "extensive vamping"
Evil Overlord Rule #86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
Be carefull, the RIAA might try to use the DMCA claiming they are being harmed by this.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
I was skeptical, but I plugged in a few of my favorite songs (Country, no flames please... ^^;). I gave it three songs that are at the top of my favorites list (I Sure Can Smell the Rain, The Dance, and Anymore). Every song in an hour of listening to it has been spot on what I like to listen to.
I think what makes me happiest with it, however, is the variety of artists they play. I was expecting a small list of artists and songs, but many of the artists and songs they play I've never heard before. I'll probably subscribe to this simply because it's playing incredible songs that don't get radio airtime.
From a technical standpoint, I'm very impressed by the speed and musical quality. They have an elegantly simple design for their site. And it works.
Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
I would be surprised if most of the /. crowd listened to anything except Chemical Brothers, Paul Oakenfold and The Crystal Method, etc;.
/.'ers are, that type of music, along with the ubiquitous rap/r'n'b, is so overwhelmingly ever-present and oppressive, we have good cause to slag it...
As for contemporary pop, you are correct about the 'slagging off'; but in the U.S., where most
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I've been using Pandora for about a month, and am very pleased with it. It does a great job of picking apparently unrelated artists that fit into the genre of the station you create. The best example I noticed was a station created from Lords of Acid and Chemical Brothers playing a track by Garbage. I don't know Garbage's music well enough to say if all their music fits, but the one track that Pandora picked fit in seemlessly. I listen to it most of the day at work, and maybe an hour or two at night. I've set up half a dozen stations and shared another half dozen from friends of mine. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
:)
Just go easy on it Slashdot, I'm listening right now and don't want the beat to drop.
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Pop artists are backed up by a stable of studio musicians and probably songwriters for that matter. Someone like Britney may sing well but she doesn't even have to do that because her voice can be tweaked in real time by equipment. For that matter, the band only has to play somewhat compently although studio musicians tend to know what they're doing technically even if they are discouraged (probably) from applying any of their own imagination. The entire performance can be tweaked in real time now.
Billy Ray Cyrus came from the area I grew up in. When he was signed, his band thought they had hit the big time too. Wrong. After the summer road tour and maybe a demo tape, his band was dropped like a bad habit and replaced with studio guys. On the other hand, Steely Dan was doing that long before it occurred to the labels to do it. They write good pop but aren't all that good live. Going to a Dan show won't be unpleasant though because they have always surrounded themselves with competent sidemen. Come to think of it, Jean-Luc Ponty did the same thing. Did anyone ever go to one of his shows to see the goofy violin player with an overinflated opinion of himself? His bands made him look better than he really was too.
Britney's voice all by itself wouldn't carry her. Pavarotti she is not. Without the sideman and technical help and the all important hype and branding, she'd be flipping burgers somewhere. I have absolutely no guilt about ripping on the likes of Britney Spears.
Hi, I'm vic. I'm an engineer at Pandora and we are bracing ourselves for the Slashdot onslaught. Let me know if you guys have any questions!
Here's an idea for combining this model with other models for recommending music. Take the recommend the song based on structure model, combine it with the recommend the songs based on what other people who listen to music like you list to model (e.g. last.fm), and add the Amazon purchasing model to it. Combine that data with specific user feedback... things like what time of day does the person listen to this song, group, genre... what day of the week, what's the weather like (b/c it impacts mood), maybe even how many keystrokes they're type (working?), and add personal rating options, information about whether they listen to the song all of the way through, etc.
So, the application for that data is that you should be able to hit the play button on your media player and it should based on the time of day, weather, etc. be able to create a playlist for you based on your past behaviors. Then allow for simple controls, either to increase/decrease tempo, define the mood/style you're interested in at that time, or other simple subjective hints. Of course you should also be able pick specific songs/playlists, artists, etc. if you want to help seed the list or listen to something specific. Combine that with a streaming audio service, that would occassionaly inject a stream of a song into your playlist that you don't own but that matches your tastes and current mood, and offer you the chance to purchase it and you might have another way to sell/market music online.
but I think they wasted their time. I entered a band I like.. I clicked to about 10 songs worth. 3 of those songs were by the band themself, then I completely hate/despise 5 that it recommended, and I like the other two. Amazon's "other customers bought such and such" is more useful
You don't have to imagine Mashups - they already exist :) Try some of the hits that come up on this search. Sometimes you'll even get video mashups ;)
By the way, Eminem actually changes to other styles pretty well. My favorite is probably "Loser Yourself" (Eminem vs. Beck), although a lot of them work really well (Eminem vs. Prodigy, Eminem vs. the Knightrider theme, etc).
I wonder if the richness of songs makes them harder or easier to blend together. Rap or rap-like groups seems to blend the best (Ice T, Beck, Eminem, Missy Elliot, etc) , but oldies tend to also (for a masterful mashup, check out "The Beatles vs. The Monkeys: Paperback Believer"). The Gray Album ("The White Album" mixed with "The Black Album") is another good example. Destiny's Child also works very well in a lot of cases ("Survivor Number Five", "Smells Like Teen Booty", "Destiny's Problem Child", "My Favorite Name"), as does Pink ("Just Mix F***in Anything", "Free Party", etc), Madonna ("Computer Music", "Wild Rock Music", ""), and Kylie Minogue ("I Feel Kylie", "Accidents Happen"), and a number of other pop groups. Semi-ambient groups like Ms Dynamite make some nice mixes as well, like "Egyptian Dynamite" (mixed with "Walk Like an Egyptian")
You'll find that when you mix components of music around and change their styles, you can often get something better than the original (the classic case is "The Genie Dance", but there's a lot of great stuff)
"'If one must live then one must die.' - oh, the truth must be funnier than this..." -- MammÃt
Counterpoint is a noun. Funny, though.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
The only bad thing is, it does not (from what I have seen)match lyrical content. So far after typing in "System of a Down" it came up with music that sort of sounded like it. But not at all the same type of content. Some times when I search for music I am looking for just something a little bit different in musical composition but alot of time i want the same type of lyrics.
Reminds me of the first time I heard the Kidneythieves rendition of Crazy. {shakes head} It's not how Patsy Cline would have done it, but I like it still.
Common, how much bullshit can you hear/read before identifying it as it. Does it only require jazz in front of the word musician for people to view someone as a musicologist? Britney Spears makes dimwitted easy music for people who don't really like music but wanna look cool. It's what we call in the business train music, it comes real hard and goes fast and then we forget about it, she's no bethoven, she's no Beattles, she's a musician that makes hits and sell records, period. Its quite something to be able to do this but no need to go overboard. Giving it some intellectual value is downright insulting to anyone who actually care about music for something else than knowing what to wear or how to groove, mean, care for the music . No need to listen to classical music, or jazz, which are indeed decent form of music, even pop music brings forth some very interesting stuff, Radiohead, Kid Koala, and many many others are actually deep stuff, innovative and accessible stuff, hip-hop even, Mo Wax record label has proven many time that hip-hop could be extremely complex and accessible. If you need to invoke the name of a no one self-described "jazz" musician for people to believe Britney is complex stuff it just mean it isn't. If Britney was complex stuff you grandma would find it complex even if joe nowhere "jazz" musician wouldn't say it. there is nothing innovative or original about her music, or complex.
I gotta say this is a brilliant idea. I've been listening for the last half hour and I'm hooked. I am tempted to sit planted in front of the computer listening for the rest of my ten hours but I can't because now I have to go to the record store....
That's easy, you listen to symphonic / warrior metal. Problem solved! \m/
stuff |
What would be more interesting would be if someone came up with software that could analyze the waveform of a song and catagorize it in the same way that these musicians are doing. That would remove any individual bias.
In the early 80s Scientific American had one of the first articles I ever read about fractal mathematics and music. It talked about a statistical value called Spectral Density, which varies from white noise to "brown" noise. In white noise the signals have no relation from one moment to the next, as in hailstones randomly falling on a piano keyboard. In brown noise they are strongly related, as in a mouse walking up and down the keys. Fractal patterns have a spectral density somewhere in the middle. Neighboring signals stay around each other for a while, then there's a jump to a different area and it stays around there for a while. The jumps themselves show the same pattern. The article said that almost any piece of music that as wide popular appeal, regardless of the genre, has a fractal Spectral Density. Popular pieces of abstract art were also said to have the same property.
Anyway, I wonder if songs that are similar in the subjective terms Coons uses would be similar in spectral density or some other mathematical way? It would be really interesting to make automated measurements of songs and see if you could get similar clustering.
Unrelatedly... the article went on to say that the human peripheral nervous system produces white noise, but as you probe closer to the central nervous system the signal becomes more and more fractal, as if the nervous system itself is filtering our raw perceptions and passing a fractal version to our brain. In an experiment with radar scans of a college campus full of people moving around, they found that any one scan was predominantly white noise, but the difference between two scans a second or two apart was fractal noise. They speculated that this might be a key to our ability to process the complex, changing world around us and notice subtle but important details, for example when we immediately notice "something odd" about a person. Fascinating stuff.
I'm in love! Its amazing, I entered the Shins, and yeah they played a few shins songs, but the songs they recommended, are just what I like.
And hey, $36 a year, is only $3 a month... support local musicians, and get get great recommendations... I just wish they could sell you the song....
Spider Robinson's short story Melancholy Elephants, in which he discusses the mathematics of unlimited copyright terms.
Windows Most laws Tax forms Being a teenager Being an adult Fruitcake
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
Maybe my tastes are too ecclectic, but this really didn't seem to work very well for me. Maybe they just need to broaden their database. They seemed to draw a blank on quite a few of the example songs or artists I supplied. And then again, they turned up some things that I wouldn't consider to be very mainstream. Hell, it didn't even recognize "Everybody to the Limit", and that is SOooo 2003.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I Bet you they only play RIAA content or song that you can (or Have to) buy.
What about free music?
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Or does it recognize typos? And Leeb/Fulber were just trying to make a buck and they have said as much.
It's fairly complex because it doesn't repeat the same four one-chord open-fifth bars for 20 minutes? *ducks*
It should be something that's freely available as part of whatever website you buy your music on...I highly doubt they would get enough revenues from Music Fans...if they really want this to fly they are better off making sure they own all pattents to it and sell companies like amazon the right to use their technology...
I have been a musician for 15 years and have always been interested in the origin and progress of music.
The music that we listen to today is a branch off of other styles of music. Yes, music has a family tree linking all the way back to cavemen grunting in unison while pounding bones together.
Music is like humans (as far as the book of Genesis) it may have all evolved in different areas and have different sounds but it all eventually had a common beginning.
For an exercise, take rock-n-roll today and make links back to 2000, 1990, 1980, 1970, etc.. Its an interesting voyage to see how far it goes back..
For instance, Classical made way for ragtime, which laid the ground for country. At the same time Classical helped opera, which later became orchestra, then big band, then jazz..
I may not be 100% correct in my time lines, but I assume you get the point.
Jimi Spier
www.jimispier.com - My tunes
It took it like 10 songs to get to a Frank Zappa. Parody, comedy, satire...I would have thought that the songs related to each other like that.
But it's based on music not content...
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
Can't resist...
You could just do a few simple word searches, you know:
BEER
DIVORCE
LYING
BROKEN CAR
STUPID DOG
NO MONEY
It doesnt play the music though
http://www.musicplasma.com/
This is great service for music enthusiasts. I wonder if the music analysis is human driven or automated?
Thats actually not quite accurate. -Pandora requires shockwave Flash version 6 or above. Not javascript. -The popups are only necessary if you laungh the minimized player in a small window. Otherwise, it runs in a standard browser window. But if you'd still like to beat our webmaster, I'd be happy to put you in contact with him.
http://www.musicbrainz.org/ Musicbrainz already has music fingerprints. Albiet, it's not exact, but it's there. Easy to add your own music and fingerprints.
http://last.fm/ Last.FM already is a place where you can listen to music based on music you like, for free, with no commercials.
At least at those two sites I can find more than just the top 40.
I suppose the end result of this research is eventually still selling you something, by suggesting stuff that you may like.
I find a basic fallacy in this approach, as in the recommandations of Amazon and the like. People do not get entertainment from stuff they know already, but from *new* stuff, that surprises and sounds/looks unusual and different. It is the same fallacy that leads music producers to look for the a magical "formula" to create pop music, and that only leads to a massive production of crappy music that all sounds the same.
Talking about music with rich and unusual harmonic structures, I think an Honorable Mention should be made for "Election Day" by Arcadia (formed by some Duran Duran members back in 1985). While the sounds may appear almost normal now, I recall that at the time the song was a total mistery until something clicked in your brain and you "got" it. Some older people I know of were openly acknowledging that the song was just too unusual for them to understand. Remarkable.
http://www.soundflavor.com/
Check it out.
This sounds great...if you want to explore the existing base of popular music. What about new music that isn't yet on the radar? We need a system where my band can cut a track in our basement, master it on our computer, upload it, and have it spread organically. A system where if the track is good enough, days later millions of people have downloaded it and the world is beating a path to our door.
ATDIs 'Pattern Against User' got me Ted Nugent and some other forgettable hair metal (Nuge isnt hair, I know) before it stumbled upon Sparta, Alkaline Trio, Challenger, and Hot Water Music. Had me worried for a moment.
Fugazi got me... more Fugazi! Cake also proved interesting. Alkaline Trio got me The Buzzcocks, more Alk3, etc. Not too shabby.
1- The website being discussed: Pandora
2- While free and very cool, this service is only free for the first 10 hrs
Support the FairTax
To do any kind of musical analysis, you have to put a copy of that song into your computer.That's a violation of copyright, which, as the RIAA tells us patently illegal! Copying! Learning! Analysing! For shame!
Why isn't the RIAA all over this heartless criminal, who is out to destroy all of music, by going out there and giving the customer what it actually wants?
What is the world coming to! Death's too good for this heartless criminal! Throw him in jail! Block him with DRM! Don't let him away with this! He might actually make the world better! Stop him! Stop him now!
The RIAA has spoken!!!
.. with a large, expensive manual classification component. The problem with Pandora and all human-based music classification systems is that the classification is based on very high level song characteristics such as genre. A lot of information about the music is missed if these high level characteristics are all you look at.
I am familiar with a startup called Memotrax (http://www.memotrax.com/ which is using technology development by a group of mathematicians and computer music experts at the University of British Columbia. Their approach works amazingly well and does not rely on high level characteristics such as genre. As a result, it's quite possible for Memotrax to find you a piece of electronica that is very well related to that Keith Jarret piano piece you were just listening to.
There is no public demo available yet, but look out for it. It's truly amazing.
racially segregated??? no... rather, blacks listen to black music, white males listen to black music, and white females listen to white music.. it's only a problem with the white females having little or no taste ;-)
Interesting approach. It seems a shame not to mix their expert knowledge/recommendations with the collaborative filtering data that they collect when people use it. I think the best recommendation systems will try to leverage all these types of data. I also think it's neat to supply these kind of recommendations in web-search format: as a ranked list, given a query/set of queries. A project that tries to do that for movies, music and books is here. After all recommending web pages, or recommending music, can't some parallels be drawn here? Come on Google, fix it for us!
Way wrong moderation here. Anyone actually listen to the song?
It's funny. It's also fake.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Don't know if it's in the article or not, but it's at http://pandora.com/
Brilliant!
I've been using predixis software for a few months now to put together music mixes(http://www.predixis.biz/).
The software analyzes music files you have on your PC and creates a kind of musical finger print. Then you give it a song to start with and it puts together a play list of similar sounding songs.
My wife used to work at a radio station back in the day when the disk jockey actually selected the songs that were played. She's really good at putting together a play list and she was very impressed with the mixes the software puts out. If you don't put any restraints on the genre that the software selects from the play list can be a bit odd (throwing Christmas music in with Rock or opera) but it all sounds good together
One of the things I like about it is that it will pull songs out of my collection that I haven't listen to in years. It's like discovering good songs all over again.
so is Google
"Oops I did it again" was originally recorded by Louis Armstrong.
If a twelve year old garage-band covers the Rolling Stones,
it will have the same chord structure.
Does this system account for the thousands of elusive variables
that make a particular track "rock"?
Those who analyze art, music or literature too deeply, usually
do so because they don't get it.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Obviously the chords were so complex, they had to be to cover for the lack of range in Ms. Spears vocal monotone.
Interesting approach. It seems a shame not to mix their expert knowledge/recommendations with the collaborative filtering data that they collect when people use it. I think the best recommendation systems will try to leverage all these types of data. I also think it's neat to supply these kind of recommendations in web-search format: as a ranked list, given a query/set of queries. A project that tries to do that for movies, music and books is here here. After all recommending web pages, or recommending music, can't some parallels be drawn here? Come on Google, fix it for us!
Hate to editorialize, but I am really suprised at how much Bob's comments are being taken out of context.
He has studied the chord structure in Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again," and reports that it is "actually fairly complex,"
He makes no claim that the songs time signature or melody are complex. Just that the chord composition is "fairly complex". And it is. Take another listen. Not a typical progression like in a lot rock and pop.
I know Bob Coons and get to see him play guitar at our weekly jam sessions here at Pandora. He is definitely a smoking guitar player in all kinds of styles, rock, jazz, blues, you name it. Though he would never self-proclaim himself as a "jazz player".
I think a lot of people here are confusing complexity with good music. Just because a songs chord structure is "fairly complex" that doesn't mean its good, or that we think its good, or that the RIAA is paying us to say so. Its just an observation.
As an music analyst here, its important to not let personal taste get in the way of how you look at a song.
A lot of what I listen to depends on lyrics. If every other sentence is talking about blanking up some blanking blankers, I don't want to listen to it. If it is about praising God, raising a family, or honoring our country, I would more likely listen to it.
At the moment I have had 17 song played that I like and 14 that I did not. The system is pretty poor in my opinion in how it works. If it plays a similiar hard rock song to a punk song and I say I like it then it begins to play more hard rock stuff. It then seems like I need to dislike the next song or two to get it somewhat back on track.
Based on this small sampling I'd have to say it is only good for free, but it is possible that this requires 100s of songs to become truly accurate. I haven't tried adding additional music types yet to the same station so it could wind up "breaking" on that.
Arthur C Clarke wrote a short story about this (I think it's in Tales from the White Hart). The basic idea was a scientist figured out the parameters that define music and used them to determine the "ultimate song". He was eventually found turned into a drooling vegetable in his lab with headphones on, occasionally tapping a beat.
I love teh int4rw3b!!!!!111one1
hi red flayer - Thought I'd respond to a very important issue you're raising. You're certainly right that we don't have near enough musicians to analyze everything - this lack of 'scalability' was something I was endlessly piloried for from the venture community. Our focus has just been to do as much great stuff as we can handle. Aside from the major charts (music we need to have because that's the stuff people know, and use to launch stations), we primarily do indie music - no matter how small the audience, if an artist has resonated with someone, somewhere, we want to find it. I was in indie bands for most of my adult life, so this is near and dear to my heart. Pandora will NEVER lose that focus.
Most of the best songs are simple ones.
Chuck Berry is one of my favorite artists. I can't stand the Beach Boys. Maybe if they hadn't had that God awful tenor... ugh! Like nails on a blackboard.
(capcha="impress" but no, I'm not impressed)
don't understand that. Why would the record companies want me to get bored, go do something else, and then fail to click on any buy now links for great songs? At least if I'm there actively skipping, I might be actively buying. If I've tuned it down to background music, no sales will be happening.
My understanding of digital music licensing is that you have to pay per time the song is played. If you skip the first 10 songs after 10 seconds of play, this company is looking at having to pay a licensing fee for 10 songs, and this in under two minutes. It's not the record company's decision; it's this company.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
might have something to do with it, ya think?
Say hello to Tim for me will ya? I went to grade school with him in Paris.
robertscottmitchell@hotmail.com
The Musical Genome project thinks Eminem is the same thing as Bust a Rhymes.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Hey, that gives me an idea for a book! What if there was a secret code buried in all of Mozart's music which was the key to some spooky old secret, I dunno, like the location of the Holy Grial or something .. what do you mean you've heard it before?
This is definitvely a hit or miss system... my first try was "less than jake" which, well... bombed... My next try was "Unforgiven" by Creed (Actually a metallica cover, but...) and it came up with some great tracks by artists I had never heard of... Next, I tried a generic search for Brian Eno which returned some good stuff (Tangerine Dream, etc...), and, for some reason, christian hymns... (Which didn't last long... I nixed them.) Overall, I think I'm buying it with my next paycheck... I give it an 8 out of 10. ~Tai
I'd like to select "Stop - Wake up" and search for songs with similar rythms...
Now I wonder what would happen if they categorize music for games such as Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (those ARE pretty complex).
Most pop stars do not actually write the songs. They often have song writers do it for them. The stars may add or change the original a little. These pop stars often buy the rights to say they wrote it when they really haven't. There is a long history of this in pop music. Elvis, The Monkees - many of these groups did nothing but sing what someone else wrote for them.
OK, but having no notice that Flash is required is poor design - I don't have it installed at work.
Second, my statement about "not degrading down to HTML" stands - what is wrong with filling in my song titles into a standard HTML form if I don't have Flash installed?
www.eFax.com are spammers
I have doubts the system will be useful for telling one what other stuff to listen to, unlike this system: http://www.gnoosic.com/ . You can plug in U2, Radiohead, and Coldplay, and find other boring and pretentious music to listen to! So!
I have freaks! I did something right...
I beta tested this software and it was really fun. A friend of mine is one of the music cataloguers for that company and he got me on the beta. I got some great music recommendations off of it.
... and a few others I can't remember. Then it picks out stuff with the similar characteristics and gives you a little "private radio station" I think is what they called it. Then you can add other artists, songs, albums or genres to give you a little variety. So for example, from my Ben Folds suggestion, I got some selections from Elton John, Joe Jackson, Tori Amos, The Beautiful South, Aimee Mann, etc. etc.
For example, my favorite musician, Ben Folds, had the following characteristics:
Syncopation
Singer / songwriter
Piano lead instrument
Alternative
I then went through and added The Postal Service as a favored artist, then I started getting new flavors added to the mix. Pretty neat.
The hitch comes from the fact that their recommendations aren't always great. You can skip through their recommendations but you're only allowed to do like 6 per hour. To circumvent this, you can rate each song as it's playing (5-point rating system with the highest being "I really like this sound -- play more like this and the lowest being "Don't play anything like this ever again").
It's a fun little app. It's nice to just throw on and leave on all day... a good alternative to cheesy shoutcast stations and it's WAAAAY better than the alternative...... corporate FM crap.
*shudders*
~sj
I put in "shadows in the rain" (gorgeous jazzy song by Sting) and this thing gave me some sloppy sugary pop song saying it has in common "romantic lyrics" with "shadows in the rain" (who is about a guy affected by paranoia and seeing "shadows in the rain")
lol, I think this needs a bit more work...
-- the cake is a lie
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
What kinda numbnet creates a site that uses a pop-up interface?
I'm pretty eclectic, and I might have found it to be a worthwhile subscription. However, since they seem intent on preventing further investigation I am left to wonder if their product is as poorly implemeted as their web site.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Spear's music is complex. The problem is that Spears isn't.
Shit, Britney Spears music isn't created by Britney Spears, but by music professionals who know what they are doing. They just need a skinny girl with big tits, some dancing moves and a decent vocal range to perform them.
That, incidentially, is what pop music is: finely tuned music formulated to be performed by cardboard cutouts. Intelligible lyrics are optional.
"Oops I did it again" is a cover of a Louis Armstrong song from the 1930's.
Brittney Spears is in no way, shape, or form, even remotely responsible for that piece of music, or lyrics.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I highly recomend this, i've already suscribed to it after 30 minutes of listening, I've now been listening to it for over 3 hours, and It has yet to play somthing I don't like...
We actually spent a *lot* of time discussing this before building the product. I've been an HTML+JavaScript "Ajax" programmer for several years now, and I was hesitant to consider Flash for this application. As with any web application, you often have to make engineering tradeoffs for biggest install-base versus most interactive versus easiest to build. The biggest factor in our decision was audio -- Flash has by far the best cross-platform, cross-browser, zero-install environment for scripting audio.
I can definitely say it was the best choice. The thought of engineering "Ajax" components to script audio that work across as many platforms as possible (not to mention all the audio transcoding involved on the server side) gives me heart palpitations. We regularly have customers applauding us for the fact that our product works on Linux, Mac, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Win, IE, the list goes on. It even works on lots of platforms we don't officially "support" and never tested on. Getting that reach with typical Ajax+JavaScript simply couldn't have happened.
At the same time I understand the sentiment. I hope eventually we'll have time to build DHTML versions of Pandora in addition to Flash -- it's all matter of time and resources.
-Neil, Engineer @ Pandora
Good question... if he were actually singing, it's a cover, and that's handled by an entirely different set of organizations. I don't really know how that's handled, but you've got me curious now.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
If "oops" is harmonically interesting.. geez.
Try Debussy or Chopin.. it'll blow your mind!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I refuse to install that flash trash. If you're site requires it, I don't visit your site. Plain and simple.
I know most of the /. response seems to be positive, but I didn't find it impressive. I spent about 30 minutes playing around with this last week, and I discovered one good band from it. It justified my time, but at the same time, it convinced me that I'll never pay for this system.
Apart from the fact that the music industry has their claws so deeply sunk into this that you can only skip so many songs per hour (majorly annoying!), the recommendation system does not work very well. For instance, I was looking for bands similar to the Canadian Matthew Good Band, and most of the system's recommendations were other MGB songs. It eventually got desperate and started recommending stuff like Creed to me, which I really hate. Granted, I haven't actually heard many bands similar to MGB - which is why I always try them first on music recommendation engines.
A bit of time experimenting with goth rock (they didn't even have Tapping The Vein in their database, which is pretty good and has a near-mainstream sound) and trance (Armin van Buuren) and I didn't get any recommendations worth the time spent on those categories.
Overall, I just wasn't impressed. It seems like the sort of task that humans will be okay at, but that a really advanced computer filtering system will eventually be better on. Plus, it would be nice to see more small/independent artists in the system; I've already heard most mainstream bands in the genres I like, so showing me Yet Another Mainstream Band doesn't help much.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
Sorry, but if "He has studied the chord structure in Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again," and reports that it is "actually fairly complex", their criteria needs to be reevaluated, their algorithms need rewriting, and someone needs to be fired. Or burned alive...
Does this mean that when I buy a "fairly complex" recording of Rachmaninoff's 3rd, the next time I log in, I'll get recommended the equally "farily complex" songs of Britney Spears, or other crap by Max Martin?
Thanks, but no thanks...
Hook it up with the Wolfram Tones cellular automata music generator, and you'd have an infinite supply of original, categorized digital music, seamlessly integrated with a receptive digital audience! All it needs is an automatic applause generator that feeds back to the synthetic musicians, and you could carry a completely functional simulated music industry in your pocket! Then you could listen to millions of songs at once, in blissful silence.
The Digital Music Listener could be packaged up like a black iPod, that jacked into a white iPod, and they would silently play music to each other.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
I fucking hate the eagles.
the dude++
It was good at first but, as you add more artist to a channel it starts to get a little washy. Also, if I add a band like AC/DC to the list because I like everything b4 and not including 1980 ... major problems!
Neat, but I wouldn't pay for this.
I'm impressed and at $3.00/month seems totally worth it!
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
Is Soundflavor.com. They let you build playlists and get recommendations, relevancy ranked, that would fit the mood/lyrics/style/etc.. of that list. The advanced search shows you a little bit about the characteristics they have on each song. No I don't work there, but I know people that do and find it very useful for finding music for a particular themed party or event. There is also a social networking component where if you "trust" other members' musical tastes your recommendations are changed by how they've rated different songs.
Actually, that was a parody -- and a very funny one too. You can download it here. In actual fact, as Wikipedia says, "Oops!... I Did It Again was written and produced by constant suppliers Max Martin and Rami."
Hyghway To Hell - AC/DC = AC/DC(>=1980, whatever, blah!), KISS (Whatever, blah!), Scorpions (Whatever, blah!), Van Halen (Whatever, blah!), MC5 (Kick out the Jams, cool!) I think some sort of AI, rather than some guys opinion, could do better than this.
I wish I had mod points today, because I would love to promote this post and the product it references. I too have drunk the Predixis koolaid. It's a great product, and has made my music listening experience much more enjoyable, because I now listen to songs that I would never have thought to pick on my own. And it's available for the Mac!
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
You don't have to use the popup player, you know. Besides, Firefox hasn't blocked it anyway ;)
Some groups that you might enjoy:
Nightwish -- Finnish Symphonic Metal, with an opera singer as the lead singer
Porcupine Tree -- Mixture of metal and more symphonic / electronic parts
Savatage -- The metal version of Trans-Siberian Orchestra
You might also check 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonic_metal' for other ideas...
Mozart is fucking overrated. Give me Beethoven over that tripe any day.
I've got to disagree with that. There may be sophisticated layering in the production of a Spears tune but musically there isn't an advancement over the past. The Beatles wrote music that was harmonically and melodically rich. Leonard Bernstein openly praised Brian Wilson's compositional talent when he heard "Pet Sounds". Duke Ellington's music was mostly performed in dance halls (early on), but he managed to throw a sense of narrative into his arrangements that just isn't heard on the pop charts anymore.
what they claim to provide would be a most excellent service. however..
this isn't quite that functional. it seems to group albums by genre only. we've all bought albums for one song that is like a tasty peice of chocolate while the others were spoiled milk. so when I type in a song, and get another off the same album that sounds quite different I'm already uneasy. so I skip and get another artist from the same 'genre' that sounds completely different.
I guess it's not quite technical enough. I expect some sort of frequency pattern analysis from something like this. If this were the case, at the very least the songs should sound like they are from the same producer.
Spitting tracks at me from a database of genres proves it is nothing more than a glorified marketing tool.
Why would you have an HTML form to enter input data for a Flash application. If you have Flash, use the Flash form element, if you don't have Flash what's the point of entering anything.
That said, there actually is a valid reason and maybe, just maybe that is what you were thinking of, namely accesability. I don't know how easily blind or otherwise disabled people can use Flash forms, but it's most likely far more inconvenient than HTML forms.
Anyway, Flash is horrible if it's used incorrectly. But for small games and stuff like this, it's great. The only viable alternative, I guess, would have been a Java applet, and I think I prefer Flash. Or maybe a standalone application.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Then you should have a listen to a band called Therion, in particular the albums Theli and Vovin. They combine the metal influences of Metallica and Iron Maiden, with an orchestra, two choirs and four soloist opera singers to produce some truely magnificent songs.
I tried the free hour and love it. (Got a list of ten artist I didn't know to check out!)
But when I tried to register it said it is for USA residents only. Any idea why, and is this going to be changed sometime?
Fantastic! They are recommending some independent artists in addition to the RIAA artists on here. With judicious use of RIAA Radar, I may have found nirvana.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I don't want any bloody computer program to "recommend" anything to me. This is the way I work: I find a cache of LPs at a local thrift shop/house sale/friend's house/whatever. I rifle through and see if there's anything I think might be worth listening to. If it's a Blue Note label or Decca classical or Everest 50's era release, I don't think twice - it comes home with me. If it looks wierd/different/otherwise interesting, I'll go for it because frankly it's either free or little more than a dollar for a whole album's worth of great music which will invariably sound vastly better than any Compact Disc release, even *if* I could find one (which in many cases I can't). I then clean and play those vinyl treasures that the drooling masses will never enjoy as they spend more time boasting about how many bleeding songs they've sucked into their feeble souding iPods than actually listening to them. I also find I *listen* to whole albums at one go, as opposed to putting an iPod on random play and half ignore the music. (But hell, you've got ten thousand songs on it - *that's* the important thing! Who cares about the music!). . Sorry, but the current music scene and the means of playing it back just makes me physically ill, to be frank. Get yourself a great turntable, hit the yard sales and find some *real* musical treasures. Sheesh. Cheers
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
It's included in the winamp full distrobution or at http://www.predixis.biz/ Although, it's more for finding simillar tracks you already have. Basic level is free though.
What I'm curious about, then, is what happens when differnet kinds of people, rate on differnet kinds of things:
I don't generally even hear lyrics, caring almost-entirely about sound, syncopation / counterpoint / force / complexity-harmonics, .
( good Bach rendition, good taiko / industrial / industrial-dance, Consolidated's Crackhouse, and whatever that tune by 'Snap' was that CFNY played, back in the day, that also had the lyrical-syncopation/complexity I love. . . one single tune by Eminem had equivalent lyrical-syncopation, but it's so rare, from what I've heard, that usually ignoring the lyrics is better, fer me )
swirls of sound dancing amongst one-another, structure-dance, tinge of humour, etc. .
Is your system ALSO identifying the several different KINDS-of-valuing,
so-that ones who consistently identify what we like by sound,
get music that is similar by sound,
and whomever identifies what-is-similar by voiceplay ( song-equivalent to Chaucer, I'm thinking ), or melody, or something-else,
gets recommendations based-on-that?
There are dimensions of similarity-judging, I'm getting-at, and discovering the normalS, note that plural, and letting them do their thing, .
is entirely different from what using statistics on several different kinds of judging
and averaging 'em,
if you see what I mean. .
IPTables enhancement Fail2Ban bans cracker-login's
> Why couldn't a computer do this?
It already has. From what I understand http://www.predixis.biz/ uses "Machine Listening" to analize a song's waveform and group similar songs togther. The problem is that when it tries to suggest similar songs, it groups everything that sounds exactly the same together. So if you have 15 Radiohead songs in your collection, Predixis will deliver you 15 "similar" Radiohead songs...not exactly interesting.
Please consider documenting your protocols.
I can -- and would be glad to -- build a homebrew open-source client. I'd do the initial work on Win32, and then I'd release the source to others who could fill in the other platforms.
Flash is cross-platform and all that, but it's cross-platform garbage. Your core competency is not designing music players... the value you build at Pandora is 100% server-side, if you think about it. Let us (meaning, the community at large) worry about the player side.
As expected, it couldn't find some of the more obscure artists, but it did suprise me occasionally. Though of the suggestions, I only found about 30 to 40 percent of them decent, and a lot of the time I was just given numerous songs by the artist i entered. While that's a good thing if i'm just wanting to listen to a radio station, this service, I thought, was supposed to find new artists for you. For $36 a year though, it seems like good service, and I can only see it getting better with the more artists it adds. Though I can't help but say that there's nothing like getting suggestions from a Human who likes someone you like.
Beta tested, Mother Approved
"The next step would be to come up with intelligent software (and package it in a nicely designed piece of plastic hardware) that could automatically listen to and enjoy all the music being automatically generated and classified by other computers!"
This will go great with the Electric Monk.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.