Aural Amalgam
Thursday, 28. June 2007, 15:04:45
I've been a long time fan of Pandora Internet Radio, and have supported them by purchasing an annual sub for two years now. I've historically loved Pandora. But some times they really make me wonder . . .
I'm a creature of habit. I don't care to utilize more than a few stations at any given time--I have no need for the 100+? slots we're given for stations. I'm happy with a dozen or so painstakingly crafted/honed stations. Because of that, days like today can be especially frustrating. I expect it to play good music. Music that matches the preferences of that station, as is the implied behavior. This morning my formerly warm ambient with some tribal rhythm station started playing rock, techno and has yet to play a single song I care for. Not one today! At first I thought perhaps I'd gotten drunk and thumbed up the wrong songs for the wrong station--but that isn't the case. What the hell is wrong with Pandora today?!
The best I can come up with is that adding Apollo 13 is what did it--there is a rhythm section in that song. But why would one song completely undo dozens of ambience? I can only assume they have a system in place to maintain that one doesn't stick with the same rotation too long. That makes sense to a point--since discovering new music is key to Pandora--but it just seems way, way too excited to not just mix it up, but completely throw a curve. I give it a song that slightly extends outside "normal" for the station and all of a sudden, it figures I don't have any preferences at all. Sure, go ahead, play anything you want. Corrupt the station, throw my work out the window, make sure I hear stuff I normally wouldn't hear because I ignorantly didn't want to hear it!
In reality, it's probably a subtle shift -- a couple attributes from this song, a couple from that--and it corrodes in a manner that is complexly logical. But I just really think it should be smarter than this. I thought it was smarter than this. Maybe in these cases of corruption I'm dealing with some sub-genres that are too close to genres I don't care to hear and ultimately it always bleeds off of what I want. What I wish is that I could filter the station's songs based on specific attributes so I could quickly weed out the bad seeds. A lot of the junk that I'm hearing features "a tight kick sound" -- which is -not- feature in any of the songs I liked. But apparently it's a common attribute with songs that -do- share common traits with what I like. If only I could delete all the tight kick tracks.
I really, really hate when a good station goes bad. This has happened a couple of other times as well--out of the blue a normally perfectly accurate station goes amok. Each time, despite my best efforts, I was unable to "repair" the station and ultimately had to delete it and start over. I've never been able to fix a station once it becomes idiotic. But as always, I'll try.
I'm bummed.
I'm a creature of habit. I don't care to utilize more than a few stations at any given time--I have no need for the 100+? slots we're given for stations. I'm happy with a dozen or so painstakingly crafted/honed stations. Because of that, days like today can be especially frustrating. I expect it to play good music. Music that matches the preferences of that station, as is the implied behavior. This morning my formerly warm ambient with some tribal rhythm station started playing rock, techno and has yet to play a single song I care for. Not one today! At first I thought perhaps I'd gotten drunk and thumbed up the wrong songs for the wrong station--but that isn't the case. What the hell is wrong with Pandora today?!
The best I can come up with is that adding Apollo 13 is what did it--there is a rhythm section in that song. But why would one song completely undo dozens of ambience? I can only assume they have a system in place to maintain that one doesn't stick with the same rotation too long. That makes sense to a point--since discovering new music is key to Pandora--but it just seems way, way too excited to not just mix it up, but completely throw a curve. I give it a song that slightly extends outside "normal" for the station and all of a sudden, it figures I don't have any preferences at all. Sure, go ahead, play anything you want. Corrupt the station, throw my work out the window, make sure I hear stuff I normally wouldn't hear because I ignorantly didn't want to hear it!
In reality, it's probably a subtle shift -- a couple attributes from this song, a couple from that--and it corrodes in a manner that is complexly logical. But I just really think it should be smarter than this. I thought it was smarter than this. Maybe in these cases of corruption I'm dealing with some sub-genres that are too close to genres I don't care to hear and ultimately it always bleeds off of what I want. What I wish is that I could filter the station's songs based on specific attributes so I could quickly weed out the bad seeds. A lot of the junk that I'm hearing features "a tight kick sound" -- which is -not- feature in any of the songs I liked. But apparently it's a common attribute with songs that -do- share common traits with what I like. If only I could delete all the tight kick tracks.
I really, really hate when a good station goes bad. This has happened a couple of other times as well--out of the blue a normally perfectly accurate station goes amok. Each time, despite my best efforts, I was unable to "repair" the station and ultimately had to delete it and start over. I've never been able to fix a station once it becomes idiotic. But as always, I'll try.
I'm bummed.
WIDGETIZE