Pandora.Com-plete Exposure

Published April 15, 2008

By Peter Casasa-Blouin

As a student I have often been intimidated by how many books there are in the world. I am not alone, and many of us will never read all the books we want to, nor should we. Even those of us who aren’t bound by language and can explore different worlds through different words are at an impasse when contemplating literature’s vastness.

Even in our search for knowledge, we stumble on books that we hate. As I approach post-graduate life, I often dream of some faceless figure to guide me to books I will definitely like. While it seems my guide for books will never appear, I have found my guide through the world of music, Pandora.com. This site showed me the multiplicity of music and possibility to access that unimaginable number.

My first encounter was shallow, at best, and required a friend’s assistance. I typed in a very obvious artist whose songs I have played in their entirety. This conjured up a less bland but equally obvious artist who musically synced with the former. The simple gesture of typing a song and receiving an endless list of similar music was truly eye opening. Pandora even encourages listener comments and engagement to enhance our collective experience. I quickly realized that I could do here with music what I could never do with books.

I must concede that books are longer and perhaps more engaging, depending on the reader. However the quantity and quality of music I have since been exposed to through Pandora could not be matched even in a four-year intensive honors program for which I completed all the reading. And this is only after a few months of usage.

An amazing aspect of this “Music Genome Project” is that you are guided to music you never thought of before and that you may never have known you liked. By limiting us, the listener, to one key word, Pandora takes us on a musical adventure that we play little role in but couldn’t have planned better for ourselves. The likeness of the music retrieved is so seamless and impressive that when I let the imaginary radio station sift through its library I am unaware of artist transitions.

Many people have been awakened to this new way of listening to music. In an age where full album sets are replaced with playlists of your favorites, Pandora offers a syncopated utopia that blends the comfort of a perfect mix with the depth and variety of wax archives. As if I couldn’t give higher praise to this website, it is also free. In the twenty seconds it took to type my email address, year of birth, and gender, I was able to do what my father has always aspired to: obtain the ultimate music library.

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