Pandora

If you’ve ever dreamt of a world where radio didn’t completely blow, your vision has finally arrived: Ignoring all genres, scenes and commercial viability, the Music Genome Project, an endeavor to analyze all music down to its DNA, has analyzed 300,000 songs by 10,000 artists and last summer put its work to public use via Pandora.com. It’s a radio station that creates playlists by matching an initial suggestion by you to songs or artists that share the greatest amount of musical attributes. For instance, type in “El Paso” by Marty Robbins and Pandora gets to work finding tunes “featuring country roots, acoustic sonority, major key tonality, an acoustic guitar solo and acoustic rhythm guitars.” The songlist for my personal El Paso Radio began with “Saddle Tramp” by Robbins, followed by “Charlie’s Shoes” by Billy Walker and “The Brand New Tennessee Waltz” by Jesse Winchester. You can reject songs, make song comments that contribute to the MGP and click on links to by tunes or albums at iTunes and Amazon. You can have up to 100 radio stations, but with T.W. Walsh and Woody Guthrie on the playlist, I’ll keep the dial set El Paso Radio for now.