MousePotatoPower

You’ve heard of the human genome project, an effort to identify all of the genes in human DNA.  It took 13 years of number-crunching by computers to complete it.

Well, somebody got the bright idea to start a Music Genome Project.  This may not provide any scientific breakthroughs, but it is quite amazing.  By identifying 400 different traits in music and having musicians listen to and analyze songs, a song’s “genome” can be identified.

What good is a musical genome?  Well, take a look at Pandora Radio.  Give the website an artist that you like and Pandora Radio will feed you a few songs by that artist.  Nothing fancy, iTunes can do that.  Well, keep listening and you will get music that is “genetically related” to your favorite artist.  You really have to hear it to believe it…pretty impressive.

I listen to a little bit of J-pop and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Pandora’s database even has Japanese music.

Pandora has partnered up with Logitech and Sonos to give you access to Pandora via Logitech’s Squeezebox and the Sonos Digital Music System.  So you can listen to music you like without a computer.  There is even an option to use your cellphone!  I don’t have an unlimited data plan, so that’s not up my alley.

There are licensing issues and Pandora is only available in the US.  Those of you that are “international” are just out of luck.