Oracle Online

Like so many institutions in the music industry, the Grammy awards have been struggling to keep up with a constantly changing landscape. Technology has been constantly redefining our music experience for the larger part of a decade. Of course things changed when we went from vinyl to tape to CD, but in the past couple of years we’ve seen the whole industry turn itself inside out. This has caused unparalleled calamity at record labels, as well as unparalleled innovation by those outside the industry.

That’s where Pandora comes in. Internet radio is nothing new, but this kind of internet radio is. You start out by entering either an artist or song in a search field on the flash interface.
Pandora then creates a radio station based on aspects of your entry. No clunky external applications need to be downloaded, its all contained within one window of your internet browser. It's like magic, but it's not.

Pandora assigns “genes” to songs and artists. For example, I created a station by entering “Outkast.” After making sure that I want a station based on the artist “Outkast,” Pandora streams songs from similar artists. What makes something similar to Outkast, you ask?

According to Pandora, Outkast features “club rap roots, southern rap roots, rhythmically complex rapping, and the use of tonal harmonies.” Each one of these descriptors is a genome that is assigned to songs.

The station will then explore other songs that have some of the same genomes as the initial artist to make a playlist. You can rate each song with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. A thumbs-up rating will prompt the station to play more of the song while a thumbs-down rating will both stop the song and remove it from the station permanently. You can also skip songs, which will not permanently ban the song, but will advance the playlist. Users can only skip songs six times an hour due to licensing agreements.

Album artwork is also displayed in the modestly appealing and highly functional flash interface. There are also links to Amazon and iTunes for easy purchase of tunes that are played on Pandora stations.

But how good is Pandora? Can it actually scope out obscure songs and pair them with accurate predications of what listeners will like? Yes. For example, I like a lot of lyrical hip-hop, a lot of which is not gracing the airwaves of commercial radio. I put “Immortal Technique,” one of my favorite rappers in the artist field. Minutes later, the station played both a Nas song and a GZA song that I actually have on my iTunes. Pandora’s predictions are so precise that its genuinely creepy.

Not only does your self-created radio station read your mind, it also tells you why it's playing what its playing. For example, I was wondering why my previously mentioned Outkast station started playing Chingy, but it told me.

When I was 11 years old, I was fascinated by the Grammys. It was a great opportunity to see all the musicians I idolized at a young age. Plus, the show was much more exciting back then. The 1998 Grammys were characterized by a coked-up Ol’ Dirty Bastard storming the stage, and Bob Dylan’s Soy Bomb backup dancer (it's totally worth it to Youtube those incidents, by the way).

Maybe I’m just so old and bitter now, but these Grammys weren’t nearly as exciting as Pandora, which got me just about as excited as when ODB stormed the stage proclaiming that “Wu Tang is for the children!”

I’ll admit that on the surface, it doesn’t completely blow up one’s brain. Considering, though, that Pandora only requires a modest internet connection and a flash player, the future implications for it are truly astounding.

Traditional radio has always been a medium that is somewhat interactive. Hot jams have typically been characterized by switchboards lit up like a Christmas tree in Rockefeller center.

What Pandora proposes, though, is interactive on a whole new level. Not only can users leave feedback on what songs they think match their station, they can also suggest new music that is not yet in Pandora’s system.

Pandora is slightly less than an Internet utopia, mainly because playing with major labels requires compliance with strict licensing agreements. As mentioned previously, one can only skip songs six times per hour, and it isn’t possible to replay songs. However, its still drastically more interactive than regular radio.

While some of the older institutions in the music industry might not be up to speed with an audience that is fragmented into a billion little pieces, new technological innovations cater to an audience that is constantly evolving.