Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Cream Pandora: Music's Genes vs. Musicians' Jeans
Posted by Steve Haruch on Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 9:15 AM
Interesting article by Rob Walker in last weekend's New York Times magazine called "The Song Decoders." It's about Pandora and the people who sit around and figure out the "musical DNA," as it were, of all the songs available through the streaming music service. They do this by scoring songs as objectively as possible. Here's how one Pandora evaluator begins his assessment of a song: "Flat second, major third, perfect fourth, perfect fifth, major sixth, flat seventh." (Take that, hipsters!)
In practice, it comes out something like this: I typed in "Kings of Leon" and was told their music is characterized by "major key tonality" and "extensive vamping," among other things. After playing KOL's "Arizona," the site told me that " 'Dashboard' by Modest Mouse has similar basic rock song structures, punk influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, extensive vamping and use of a string ensemble." (It's also terrible, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.)
If you've ever used Pandora, you're familiar with these sorts of descriptions--flatly descriptive and neutral-sounding. I know some of you commenters out there claim that music "journalism" (by which you usually mean criticism) should be all about the music, the way Pandora is trying to be. And, of course, music writing should not be about all that other bullshit--you know, humans.
Pandora's approach more or less ignores the crowd. It is indifferent to the possibility that any given piece of music in its system might become a hit. The idea is to figure out what you like, not what a market might like. More interesting, the idea is that the taste of your cool friends, your peers, the traditional music critics, big-label talent scouts and the latest influential music blog are all equally irrelevant. That's all cultural information, not musical information. And theoretically at least, Pandora's approach distances music-liking from the cultural information that generally attaches to it.
Nevermind that music is cultural information. The article continues:
Which raises interesting questions. Do you really love listening to the latest Jack White project? Do you really hate the sound of Britney Spears? Or are your music-consumption habits, in fact, not merely guided but partly shaped by the cultural information that Pandora largely screens out -- like what's considered awesome (or insufferable) by your peers, or by music tastemakers, or by anybody else? Is it really possible to separate musical taste from such social factors, online or off, and make it purely about the raw stuff of the music itself? [Emphasis added.]
No, it's not possible to separate musical taste from social factors. Of course our music-consumption habits are shaped by cultural information--how could they not be? And that's not a bad thing. There are lots of non-musical reasons we love the music we love (and hate the music we hate). Some music we enjoy because of when we heard it, and who we were at the time. Of course, there's that other problem with the musical genome thing--just as you don't find everyone with green eyes attractive, you're not going to like every song with "extensive vamping." As Walker says, "What Pandora's system largely ignores is, in a word, taste."
[See also Tracy Moore's 2006 story on Pandora founder Tim Westergren.]
Comments (9)
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The inventor of Pandora actually came to MTSU when the whole shebang got started, very cool guy. From what he told to the five of us that went and heard him speak, the goal isn't to take taste out the equation, it was simply to help people find new music. That's it.
I am very aware of cultural aspects that can go into a person's likes or dislikes. But in the end, you have got to listen for yourself. What does it matter what your friends say about what you want to listen to? Or a blogger, or some random asshole? So many good things can pass you by because it's not Cream or Pitchfork or any random opinion source approved.
I like the Pandora selection method- there's no accounting for taste- it's so personal, like religion. So you break it down to pure musical terms. There's a like/no like button, so they can track the popularity of certain tracks and control their stream frequency based on patterns of approval.
Also ranted on this earlier and the Internet ate it: but I do believe you can separate music and social culture. I'd like to think you can appreciate rhythms & notes as opposed to what TV and boutiques promote: materialism & mimicry.
...to Steve for covering a worthwhile subject. Gives me faith in this here blogosphere.
an observation: I've found a lot of new bands/artists by being an active listener on Pandora. If that's what they set out to do, mission accomplished.
on another note: the people that "score songs as objectively as possible" must be the most boring species on earth. how can ANYONE listen to music non-objectively?
I love Pandora. It knows me pretty well. It seems I consistently enjoy minor key tonality, heavy uses of vocal harmonies, and electric instrumentation.
And I love major key tonality, frequent uses of the german augmented sixth chord, and synthesizers!
Sure as kilimanjaro rises like olympus above the serengeti!
I completely agree that musical tastes are completely cultural/subcultural. From a musicians perspective though, I find Pandora to be very interesting because it helps me to understand the structural implications of certain sub-genres that I haven't put the energy into investigating and breaking down. This also might shed light on the roots and influences of such genres. For me, knowing what NOT to sound like when composing a piece is every bit as important as knowing what TO sound like.
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