Pandora tailor made radio

Wow, here is something interesting: Pandora.
(Seems to be US and UK only, for the usual licencing/copyright/human-condition BS reasons. Hope they solve it soon.) (It can be circumvented by routing one's web traffic through a proxy
in the U.K., I hear. Anybody know how to?)

The music companies will hate it. Even though, like usual, it probably will be a boon to everybody, like all the past technologies they hated. (Radio included. And these days they pay to have their music played on radio.)

Pandora takes a name of an artist or song you like, and then with a little guidance creates a free online radio station, tailor made for you!

I tested it with something I thought would be obscure, Skinny Puppy. But lo, it handled it perfectly.

The music companies will think that it will discourage people from ever buying music at all. Which might happen with some people. But in fact it's a highly interesting way of finding new bands you may like, and perhaps buy them. For instant, I never heard of Nitzer Ebb before, but it turns out they have many of the qualities I like about Skinny Puppy. And even their third selection, Leather Strip, sounds really interesting.

In fact I've now listened to five or six of their selections, and I like them all. This is spectacular performance, no two ways about it. It's as good as my own iTunes favorites lists...

I wonder how they find similarities? Do they have editors who sit around and attribute qualities to songs and bands? (Update, a little info here.)

... It seems like you can't re-listen to a song you really like. Which, I guess, is consistent with the idea that it is radio, not your own music library. You're s'posed to buy it if you like it. (Update: it seems you can bookmark a song and play it later though. Kewl.) (Second update: no you can't, only a sample. Basically you can't play song you select yourself.)

Here's a strange line from Wiki: "Potential subscribers should be advised that many songs are not the original recorded versions and may sound altered in some manner." Whu? How and why would they alter songs?

I can't believe this is new to me. It just goes to show what it says in The Long Tail: that the world is becoming so complex that we have already lost what you could count on ealier: that if something was big and cool, most other people would know about it too. This is getting increasingly rare. This may be good or bad, but I think mostly good.

Wow, synchronicity (I am getting so much of that these days)... Just as I was writing the paragraph above, the speaker in the video presentation on their site started talking about how the music sold via Pandora is a long way down in the "tail". As he says, "relevance replaces marketing". What you listen to is determined by your taste (and some software), not a DJ or what a music label pays to have played.

Update: wow, the downside to this service is overload. I've now used it for like an hour in total, and already I have four or five bands I "need to check out later". I will never have the time! I already have stuff in iTunes I have bought but never listened to.

I'm impressed by the huge selection they have. They have to get licences for everything, and they have to have a person analyse each song. They even have an info page for each band. I'm trying to imagine what resources they use on all this.