Angry Music
I’m a big fan of Pandora Radio. I’m also a big fan of last.fm. If you haven’t heard of — or don’t use — either of those, I highly recommend you go check them out immediately. (quick run-down: Pandora is a streaming music service that learns from your input what kind of music you like and plays more music like that. last.fm is a service that lets you track your listening habits over time to see what you listen to the most, etc. Also decent for recommending other music.)
By your powers combined when you mix those two services together, you get Pandora FM. All the awesomeness of Pandora’s music recommendation engine, combined with the tracking service of last.fm.
One of the features of Pandora is that you can request to see why it played a particular song for you. The idea is that even if you don’t like a song that it serves up, you can see what it has in common with music you’ve tagged as being more suitable to your tastes. I had occasion to use that feature today, when Pandora played Nine Inch Nail’s “Every Day Is Exactly the Same” on my station dedicated to electronica (named “Daft Punk Radio” because I seeded it with Daft Punk exclusively). Here’s what it told me (by the way, I should mention I don’t dislike that song. I like it a great deal, just not for this particular station — you should be as specific as possible when training Pandora):
Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features mellow breakbeat rhythms, electronica roots, rock influences, a dynamic male vocal, and angry lyrics.
Angry lyrics. Hmm. Apparently that song has angry lyrics, and apparently Pandora has decided that I like my electronica to have angry music. I’m honestly not sure how it picked that up from the stuff I’ve fed into it. I seeded the station with Daft Punk’s best stuff, some Crystal Method, a dash of Fatboy Slim, etc. Nothing angry. And as far as I recall, nothing that I thumbed-up would qualify as “angry.”
But apparently… angry music it is. I’m waiting for it to decide that Seether is an appropriate electronica group to play.
RUMandCOKE said,
April 3, 2008, 11:58 pm
Angry Music. So like American He…… (is this the new cd, sweet, im getting it)
We could throw in a little Mindless Self Indulgence (MSI) now that is what i would classify angry music as. Seether is just good rock music after a hard day of work.
Tigerblade said,
April 4, 2008, 7:39 am
Heh, not quite like American Head Charge. Or MSI for that matter. But still angry apparently.
Yeah, Seether is a great band to play when you need something angry - they’re just angry enough to be what you need, but not so over the top as MSI or “i’m going to kill you all” sort of music.
Andimia said,
April 7, 2008, 10:35 pm
Why didn’t you tell me that you were into angry lyrics! I don’t know if I can help you on the male vocals part (maybe some Marylin Manson.) but I’ve got plenty of female angry lyrics songs.