I heard about Pandora today via Seth’s Blog. Free site which features deep personalization for music lovers based upon The Music Genome Project. You type in one of your favorite artists (I put in Dave Matthews). From the artist(s) you select, the site suggests other (lesser-known) songs/artists based upon the underlying likes/dislikes you indicate as each song plays. As it suggests each new song you can ask why it suggested the song. For me, once I passed Coldplay, Travis, and others, it told me: “based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features mild rhythmic syncopation, use of a string ensemble, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, a vocal-centric aesthetic and heart-breaking lyrics…”
This site is another great Web 2.0 demo which should get marketers thinking way past the Web as a vehicle to put your brochure online! Naturally, the site is peddling the records it’s suggesting via Amazon.com and iTunes. Can’t say that I blame them!