Can you help me discover more music that I’ll like? Well Pandora Can.

Pandora is a unique music service I recently stumbled upon. Pandora allows you to enter the name of a single song or artist, and then it generates a custom streaming music channel based around that artist. Pandora references a massive database created by the Music Genome Project to determine the properties of the song or artist you entered, and then it uses this information to select a variety of other songs it thinks you may like.

The Music Genome Project, created in January 2000, is an effort by a group of musicians and technicians to “capture the essence of music at the fundamental level” by using over 400 attributes to describe songs.

The technology is currently used by Pandora to play music for internet users based on their preferences. When users enter an artist’s name or song title, elements of the music are analyzed and a search engine is used to find similar songs, both famous and obscure. Obscure artists may submit their music to the Music Genome Project in a bid to become better known.

Pandora also allows you to tell it which songs you like and don’t like, so it can use this info to improve the selections it includes in your personal radio station. You can also create multiple stations and then switch between them whenever you want. Currently my favorite “station” is the one I created from the song “Temple Of Love” by The Sisters Of Mercy.

The Pandora media player is based in Flash, allowing for simple cross platform portability, and can use used for free (ad-supported), or you can pay a small fee for it.

I have been trying Pandora for the past few days and quite like it. What I like most about Pandora is that I can easily skip a song whenever I want, whereas with other streams I’m stuck with whatever happens to be playing.

Check it out and create your own personal radio station.