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Get in touch with technology with Tech Stuff from www.HowStuffWorks.com.

Chris Pollette

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to Tech Stuff. My name is Chris Pollette, and I am the tech editor at www.HowStuffWorks.com. Sitting across from me as he always does is senior writer, Jonathan Strickland.

Jonathan Strickland

Hey, there. Why don’t we just go ahead and get the formalities out of the way and start this off with a little listener mail. This listener mail comes from Justin. He says, “Hi, guys. I’m 14 and love the show. Don’t worry; I’m making sure this isn’t long like some of your others. So how does Pandora internet radio work with the amount of skips and stuff? Thanks for the show. It’s awesome. Justin.”

Thank you, Justin. We decided we’re going to talk about Pandora radio and the underlying structure behind it, the Music Genome Project, because it’s pretty cool.

Chris Pollette

Yeah. The Music Genome Project is pretty key to this whole thing because there are a number of different kinds of internet radio stations out there. Pandora is just one of them. Some of the other famous ones that people are probably pretty familiar with are Last.fm, or Grooveshark, Radio One Llama maybe.

Jonathan Strickland

That one is not familiar to me.

Chris Pollette

Okay. Finetune, and of course Spotify, which we have yet to see in the United States.

Jonathan Strickland

Then there are some others that are not internet radio stations but also will deliver music to you via the web, things like Lala – oh wait. That’s gone. Lala when bye-bye.

Chris Pollette

It went to lala land.

Jonathan Strickland

It went to Apple land is what it went to.

Chris Pollette

That’s true.

Jonathan Strickland

At any rate, internet radio, the interesting thing about Pandora is it kind of sprung out of the idea of how do you find new music that you’re going to like? Not just finding new music. That in itself is not necessarily that hard, but finding new music that kind of appeals to you based upon what you already like, that can be kind of a challenge.

You walk into a music store and look at the categories, and they’re pretty broad, like rock, or rap, or blues, or whatever. These genres are huge. There are subgenres in every single one of these. Just because you happen to like someone who has a great record in one genre doesn’t mean that you’re going to pick up any other record in that genre and be equally as enamored.