While stumbling across the internet with my newly added stumble upon internet plug-in, I found something that I really appreciate. It was a little thing called Pandora internet radio and apparently it is also some sort of music genome project. Pandora allows the listener to look up any artist they want to listen to. A song by that artist comes up as well as a station under the artist’s name. Pandora then, through some sort of dark voodoo magic, finds similar artists that would fit listener’s taste.
Pandora is an aesthetic shift, media converging becoming more sophisticated and versatile. Internet radio is far more interactive then traditional radio, allowing the stations to be customized to fit the listener’s taste. This aspect of surveillance in radio is indicative of a cultural shift. Pandora is taking information from the listener, interpreting it and responding with similar artists. This creates a far more interactive and participatory medium.
This medium is all about stimulating the limbic part of the brain. By not only providing the listener with the music they know and want the also provide new artists of a similar genre. This novel stimuli is the main appeal. Lets face it, hearing a great song for the first time is always better then listening to the same old good song. It is this attraction that keeps the listener coming back for more. I knew when I searched Bert Jansch, then Nick Drake and Devendra Banhart followed that I was in the right place.
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