Hey Pandora, Show Us Your Box!

I am a renowned proselytiser of music. I will whore my music collection out to anyone willing to listen. I don't listen to the radio that much so talking to friends about music is a wonderfully rich source of new music, but I have noticed recently that I very seldom listen to the music my friends recommend. Partly it is because I names tend to tumble out of my head and be forgotten very easily but I have come to realise that a large part of me simply doesn't want my musical tastes to be beholden to anyone. I want to have the satisfaction of having dug up new artists of my own accord. Silly really.

For a good while now I have been keeping my iPod stocked with recommendations from Pitchfork's excellent Best New Music page. While visiting this morning, I bumped into their weekly feature, Better Than We Know Ourselves by Chris Dahlen and lo and behold, what should take centre stage but Pandora, a music recommendation service, which a friend of mine has been pushing me to try for months. I had held out for so long, but if Pitchfork commands, I follow.

The idea that a project such as Pandora or Last.fm can effectively map and project our musical tastes is tantalisingly interesting. Not so much because it can actually be done (I don't believe it ever really will be) but for what it shows us about how and why we even listen to music in the first place.

I remember a friend of mine who once said something along these lines (I would give you the exact quote but my time machine is out of action): I used to like [insert band name here] but now they play them too much on [insert generic commercial radio station name here]. This comment goes hand in hand with the "hipper" version: I used to like [insert band name here] but now they play them too much on The O.C.. In my typically argumentative manner, I berated my friend for being such a slave to fashion, remarking that the band he knew and loved was still the same band (it was like the band had suddenly turned gay). As you can tell from my opening comments, I am just as much a slave to marching to my own beat.

Like clothes, speech and reading matter, music marks us as both individuals and members of a collective. We wear music like a badge but as much as we define ourselves though music we also constrain our music through our desired identity. I love the feedback Pandora received: "Somebody writes a note saying, 'I want Neil Diamond off my acoustic rock station now,' and I write back, 'No. Listen again. What's your problem with Neil Diamond?'" We often tend to disregard music or love it because of the associations we tie to it (Don's recent post on the Pet Shop Boys is beautifully illustrative evocation of this).

Computers may never understand why I love the throttled gypsy moans of flamenco or why I delight in the Numa Numa song but they may be able to point me in the direction of some undiscovered soundscapes and, if I listen without prejudice, they may be able to open my eyes to some unjustly closed musical doors. I suggest you check it out.

Oh dear, I just stuffed Sigur Ros into Pandora's box and she coughed up Jack Johnson. I think I have some more ideas to contemplate...

Tags: music, web, Pandora