![]() ![]() ![]() No longer do we have - as Roger Waters sang on Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” - “13 channels” of garbage “on the TV to choose from” today we seemingly have 13,000 options. This no doubt reflects our larger zeitgeist of cultural fragmentation. ![]() The collective listening of days-gone-by has been replaced by earbuds and a personal playlist. In turn, fans will never find - or share - a potential new favorite song if it’s not available on their platform of choice. As fewer people use the same platform, it’s hard for under-the-radar artists to find their fans or earn a living. But that has also invited fragmentation that affects the recording industry and how we experience music. Today Pandora, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, YouTube and other digital services give us instant access to virtually any song. Yet, as with every revolution, there were unforeseen consequences. Pandora’s founders, and the music analysts who worked with me, wanted nothing less than to democratize music, to free it from the hegemony of record executives and DJs, and to better enable artists to connect directly with fans. The goals of this project - which became the core of Pandora’s streaming service - were lofty. As the architect of Pandora Radio’s Music Genome Project, it was my job to devise a system to analyze and categorize all styles of music so that a machine-learning algorithm could more successfully lead listeners to new music they would enjoy. W hen the digital music revolution began in the early 21st century, I had a front-row seat. ![]()
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