Musical Heredity?

A few days ago, in the midst of top-priority work at the office, I came across a NYT article regarding the internet music service Pandora, and their sponsored Music Genome Project. Basically, Pandora (see also: Musicovery) tries to customize a 'radio station' based upon listener input (i.e. your favorite song or favorite band). With this input, the service tries to find similar songs and artists. They have actually hired a team of scientific musicians (or is it musical scientists?) who rate songs based upon 400 or so attributes on a scale of 1 to 5 in half-integer increments.

My initial thought was, "Cool! They're combining two things that I really love: music and exploration that uses a systematic methodology." But as I started sifting through the so-called "genes" (find a complete list here,and here are some choice examples: radio friendly stylings, dirty organ solos, defiant lyrics, mystical qualities, interesting song structure, busy bass line, and--oh God no--"chill rhymin'"?!?), I decided that something was definitely not right.

Even though attributes based on instrumentation are fairly straight-forward (is the music fast or slow, does it have dual vocal harmonies, is there an acoustic or electric guitar, etc.), determining the interesting-level of so-and-so's song structure seems to be a pretty murky area and they don't really explain the categories. Further, Pandora specifically said that they were trying to eliminate some of the more cultural and/or environmental aversions that we may have to some kinds of music. For some reason, I particularly despised the swing revival during the mid to late 90s--but on the other hand, as a child of the 80s, I tend to gravitate towards music that has electronic or synthy elements (no disrespect to acoustic music).

So the question becomes, do you really hate Maroon 5's music? Or is there something else that rubs you the wrong way?

Well, the rating system is purported to take this "je ne sais quoi" quality out of our musical tastes and distastes. So if James Blunt winds up playing on your tailored radio station, Pandora supposedly has the empirical data to counter your indignation and shouts of blasphemy.

While I think it would be really interesting to see if songs that rated high on "mystical qualities" seemed to correlate with certain instruments or genres of music, can we really accurately measure the amount of mysticism in a song without relying on our own personal, cultural, or societal experiences? Even though I don't think we can divorce our musical preferences from these complex factors, I do think that these influences/patterns are important and worth looking at.

Damn, all those hours behind the cash register at Tower, with the 'greatest sociological experiment ever' right in front of me, thousands upon thousands of subjects customers, and I don't take any notes. Sigh.