music notes

I've had a delightful few days working on cataloging the music collection. Making sure all recent purchases have label cards and are in the database. Also correcting a few bad CDs I've found here and there. I guess that shows what a nerd I am, that this is fun for me.

On Georg's recommendation I've been listening to Pandora.com at work. You "seed" it with songs and artists you like, and then as it plays songs for you, you rank each one with a thumbs up or down. I set up a station of Divaville Lounge type music, hoping to get ideas for the show. I must say I was surprised at how quickly it learned my taste. After only a few hours its suggestions were almost all good, and now it almost never gives me a thumbs-down song.

I do have a few -- well not criticisms, that's too strong. Let's say critiques. First of all, the music catalog could be bigger. I've heard a lot of songs I like, but not that much which was new to me. There's a much higher ratio of unfamiliar music on the big band channel on digital cable. Too bad there's no "classic jazz vocalist" channel on cable. And oh man, if there was a lounge/exotica channel on cable with the same depth and breadth as the big band channel? I'd never leave the house again. Speaking of lounge/exotica, Pandora's collection is so small I abandoned my attempt to create a lounge station. It doesn't recognize the Three Suns, Lenny Dee, Ethel Smith, the Harmonicats, Arthur Lyman, Perrey & Kingsley or Enoch Light. (Though it does know Yma Sumac and Martin Denny.) I read an article about Pandora which mentioned the problem of getting music into their catalog. They have a staff who are reviewing music as fast as they can, but still, there's only so much they can do.

Also, there's way too much repetition. I thought I had seeded my station with plenty of music, but I still get songs repeated on the same day. This afternoon it gave me the same song three times in forty minutes! (To be fair, that was unusual). It also tends to serve music in "sets" of 4-6 songs that are very similar, too similar at times. I really don't need to hear five songs by Django Reinhardt and his imitators (i.e. Hot Club of San Francisco or Pearl Django) all in a row. Or, say, the Andrews Sisters followed by the Boswell Sisters, then Bing Crosby with Connie Boswell, then Glenn Miller featuring the Andrews Sisters. That's a bit too much sameness.

The repetition annoyed me at first, and then I started to see it as instructive. I probably wouldn't have played any sets as repetitive as the ones I mention above, but I would have played 2-3 songs in a row from the 20s, or from big bands. Since I started listening to Pandora I have been making more of an effort not to do that anymore. Because if I play one song from a subgenre that a listener doesn't like, no big deal, it's only 2 1/2 minutes. But if I play four songs in a row just like that, I'll really irritate that listener if not drive them away entirely. So it turns out to be helpful as an example of what not to do.

Quibbles aside, Pandora does seem like an impressive achievement. It's kind of hard to believe a computer is selecting the music for me, and getting it so right most of the time. It's too bad Pandora's lounge selection is so bad. Still, there's always SomaFM's Illinois Street Lounge channel for an unbeatable lounge/exotica extravaganza. I had stopped listening to SomaFM because I listened so much, after awhile I had heard everything on there. But I went back today and they've added some new material. That Illinois Street Lounge channel has made many a work day bearable. It's like an ice cream sundae for the brain.