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March 23, 2009 (1:08 PM) by Frank EE Grubich
The best and scariest thing since sliced olive loaf.
If you were to ask me today what I thought was one of the most significant innovations in recent history, I would without hesitation say, Pandora.com.
If you know about Pandora.com, then I don’t need to sell you on its amazing ability to find and select songs based on your personal tastes. If you don’t know about it, go check it out here www.Pandora.com It’s free. And it’s awesome.
But this is no simple “favorites” type of search engine. The creators of Pandora took searching for music to a whole new — dare I say, intimate — level. The creators dissected every song on Pandora (and there are millions of them) in ways that most people don’t think of music — by tempo, beats per second, structure, dominant instrument and pitch, to name only a few. The result is, as they describe it, “your own personal radio station.” And it will continue to shape and grow and evolve depending on how much you interact with it (thumbs up, thumbs down, don’t play that again, play more of that, save to favorites, etc).
Within one hour of playing with Pandora, I was hooked.
And frightened.
Am I THAT predictable? I like to think that my tastes are pretty eclectic. After all, very few people have ever heard of Peter Hammill or Edgar Froese. And how many people in Chicago own the entire a-ha’s catalog — and admits it?!? Yet, Pandora not only knows of these artists, but manages to find similar artists that I actually like and purchase (via Amazon or iTunes). To date, I think I’ve spent nearly $800 in new purchases based on recommendations from Pandora.com. It has become my primary source of new music since the demise of Tower Records.
I’m slightly intimidated by what this technology suggests about the future of the web, advertising and media. If a program could be written that can accurately anticipate my tastes in music — why stop there. Why not apply the same theories to fine art, photography, videos, movies, literature, news, information, etc. We’re a nation hungry for instant gratification. Programs like Pandora thrive on this hunger. It’s not enough that any topic or item is just a few keystrokes away; we want the computer to give us satisfaction even before we knew we needed it.
Could these programs be attached to our search engines so that our engines “learn” about us as individuals—making our searches ever more so unique? Couldn’t the philosophies applied in Pandora be utilized establish supply chains targeting people at a one-to-one level? Imagine a search engine that knows you — not just the search terms you type in. Would that computer become your personal best friend forever? “It knows me like no one could.” Would you mourn the loss of that computer if it broke down or got stolen? Would you become trained to look to your computer for what you desire versus looking for it yourself?
Could the fat, lethargic world envisioned in WALL-E become a reality?
Think I’m full of it? Maybe. But some big names have taken Pandora seriously.
iTunes’ new Genius feature is based on the same premise as Pandora. (It might even be the same technology!) Slacker.com (www.slacker.com) is a new “find new music” competitor with equally impressive search and recommendation software. And the largest warehouse in the virtual world, Amazon.com, has boasted improvements in its recommendation software. And I wonder how many research companies have adopted Pandora’s paradigms for their own personal use. Probably more than we imagine.
Pandora.com is innovative. Pandora is awesome. Pandora is only the beginning.
Whaddayathink?
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Caroline Courtois 
