Idolator

A statistic that should make any record company executive do a double-take is buried within the Times' once-over on music-recommendation service Pandora:

As a tool for discovery, it seems to show promise: Mr. Westergren said that 10 percent of the time people tune in to a Pandora station, they end up clicking through to buy a song or album from iTunes or Amazon. That's a much better rate than standard online retailers can claim.

Pandora's engine is based on the Music Genome Project, which breaks down music by sonics ("major key tonality," "electric rock instrumentation") instead of haircuts and labelmates. Which suggests that the site's success — not to mention its staggering click-through rate — is achieved entirely through its sound-centric ethos.

It's probably way too early to throw unquestioning support behind Pandora; in the age of inflated MySpace "friend" lists and dubious whispering campaigns, a way to game the system is probably being worked on by more clued-in marketing departments as we type this. (Also, when we tried to find artists similar to surly '90s rockers Helium, we were presented with a bunch of third-tier Projekt Records wannabes.) But if Pandora and the Music Genome Project can help this tightly formatted time break free from the often-meaningless idea of "genre," it could expand the muiscal universes of many curious listeners.

Pandora
"The New Tastemakers" [NYTimes]