Like the radio, but good

Jason recently turned me on to Pandora.com. A side-project of the Music Genome Project, Pandora starts by asking you to suggest one band that you like. It will then play a song by the band you chose that is considered to be highly representative of its overall style. You rate whether you actually like the song or not, and when the song is over Pandora plays another song by a different artist that shares musical qualities with the song you just heard (if you liked it). Every time you tell it you do or don't like the song that's playing, it refines it's choices for you, and will often re-direct Pandora back to songs by artists you have said you liked before, in order to try to home in more on the qualities that you actually enjoy. Any song you say you don't like will never be played again, but other songs by that same artist may, since songs are chosen by stylistic similarties, not by genre or artist. You can even ask the player to display why that song was chosen for you. For example, the song playing now on my station is "No Friends" by The Adolescents, and it was chosen because "it features punk roots, mild rhythmic syncopation, and minor key tonality." The most obvious use of this is that it can be a cool way to help you find new artists who are similar to ones that you already like. You can also share the station you have created with other people so they can listen to it as well. After playing around with my station for about 4 hours, I've got it tuned to around 90% accuracy in relation to what I generally like. Obviously, it doesn't completely reflect every artist or style I like equally, but I'd say that if you were to listen to my Ipod set on shuffle, what you would hear there would be quite similar to what you'd hear from Pandora. If any of you are curious, here's my station:

http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh3534696