What Pandora reveals about what I like about music

Cafe Society
1

I finally got around to creating a station for myself on Pandora Radio, adding a lot of my favorite artists to the mix and seeing what Pandora spat back out at me. I’m enjoying a lot of the songs Pandora recommends, but what I really find fascinating is checking the ‘Why was this song selected?’ button and seeing what different features, or ‘genes’, seem to turn on my brain. According to Pandora, I like:

A subtle use of vocal harmony
Call and answer vocal harmony (antiphony)
Folk influences
Minor key tonality
Varying tempo and time structures
Extensive vamping
A subtle use of paired vocal harmony
Hard rock roots
R & B influences
Punk roots
Electronica influences
Repetitive melodic phrasing
Vocal central aesthetic
Dirty electric guitar riffs

These traits reappear throughout the songs that I like. From band to band, across genres, these same traits appeal to some part of me.

2

Well, it’s fun for me to try to figure out what bands might fit most of those traits. Stereolab? Portishead? Massive Attack? Am I even close?

3

I tried a little experiment a while back, I seeded a channel with all of the music (artists and songs or binaries) from the Motion Picture Soundtrack, The Last American Virgin to see what would come of it.

I present to you Last American Virgin Radio

4

Sorry, nope! Here’s some of the bands I loaded onto my Pandora channel:

Emilie Autumn
Pantera
Type O Negative
Genitorturers

5

Wow. Would not have guessed that at all given the listed “genes.”