You Will Want to Open This Box

Ever since I collected Topps Baseball calls, I have been interested in categorization. It was always fun to sort my cards by team or by position or by league. coming up with the most efficient way to organize all the info was the goal. And of course, it was pretty dependent on the goal - did I want to focus on pitching or on outfielders, east coast or west coast, and so on and on and on... As I have gotten older, I've learned more about attributes and configurations as a means for organizing data. The along comes Pandora. The Music Genome Project organizes songs by numerous attributes (one of my favorites ; subtle use of vocal harmony). all you do is set up a station based on a song or artist you like then they pick similar songs that match those attributes. They then mix it up and you let them know what you like and don't like - not what attribute but the overall effect. Over time, as you repeatly give negative marks to certian songs, Pandora notes that maybe those songs all had, say, major key tonality, and they stop playing songs with that attribute. There are hundreds of these attributes and what you get, over time, is the perfect music mix, commercial free. And oh yeah, when you hear something you like, they give you a link to purchase it somewhere. Nice.