Customization of Web Streaming for Classical Indian Music - An Unscientific Observation.

usic Genome Project®, we learn from Pandora's web site, is what powers the music service. In this post, I want to share my observations in customizing the web site for Indian Classical Music.

The only mechanism for customization of Pandora Radio is the Thumbs-Up/Thumbs-Down pair. (In How Pandora Radio Works, author Julia Layton describes in good detail how you can use the Pandora software to customize the music you'd want to listen to).


Indian classical music, as all other classical ones, is based on the 7-note octave, and so I figured it'd be easy to customize the music service. I created Hindustani Music Radio and Carnatic Music Radio stations. It took me several weeks of Thumbs-Up/Thumbs-Down activity before the stations became quite faithful to my original intention, even though the Music Genome Project claims that the number of music genomes in some classical systems is as many as 450 and, thus, I expected the music service to converge faster than it did. (At one point, when the number of Thumbs-Up/Thumbs-Down feedback was not probably enough, the Hindustani Music Radio would play Carnatic Music songs!)

If any of you listens to these two stations, and like them, my sharing them would have been well served. (I expect to continue to refine the two stations with more Thumbs-Up/Thumbs-Down activity as the future unfolds).

Another recent value we see on the Internet regarding the use of customization: Sloan Kettering and Pandora Music Genome architect to ‘prescribe’ music for cancer patients,