Pandora Descriptors

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Leader: Dinyctis
Join Policy: Open
Created on: 25 Oct 2008
Description:

For people who agree that their music makes "prevalent use of groove" and "trippy soundscapes" with a "subtle use of vocal harmony."

First of All
This is the Pandora search page you will want to use. Search by song or artist.

What are Tags?
According to last.fm, "[t]ags are like keywords or labels that you can use to classify music – artists, albums or tracks. They are simply short descriptions.
You can assign as many tags as you like to any track, album, or artist. Tags are a great way to label items by genre ('rock', 'electropop', 'alt-country', and so on), but the possibilities are endless."

About Pandora Descriptors
A group for those who love the Music Genome Project attributes (used by Pandora) and those who even use the attributes among their last.fm tags.

"There are just shy of 400 musical attributes in the Music Genome Project. When you ask the Pandora Tuner "why is this song playing?" what gets displayed is just a summary of the information used by the Music Genome. Even two songs that show identical answers to "why is this song playing?" still have countless differences that the Music Genome uses when it matches music based on each of those songs. These attribute summaries are intended to provide some interesting insight into the musicological elements of a song -- without getting into dozens of individual attributes for each element."

Additional Links
Descriptions of some of the most frequently used attributes.
A list of the attributes.

Instructions on Using Pandora Descriptors with your Tags
1) Use this page to find features of your songs.
For example, "1973" by James Blunt, a folk rock/pop rock song has the following features:
basic rock song structures
a subtle use of vocal harmony
acoustic rhythm piano
extensive vamping
mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation
a vocal-centric aesthetic
minor key tonality
prominent organ

Meanwhile, "Halcyon" by Andy Moor, a progressive trance song has the following features:
house roots
a breathy female vocal
use of modal harmonies
minimalist arrangements
a tight kick sound
a dominant bass riff
synth riffs
synth tweaking
trippy soundscapes
prevalent use of groove

2) Use the Tag feature on the last.fm scrobbler to tag your songs! Alternatively, you can use Tagging on the website.

If you do this diligently, you'll be able to use your tag page to identify qualities common to music that you like, greatly increasing the usefulness of the tag page.

Active Discussions

exdeathbr commented on
“Most liked descriptors station idea.” Monday evening

Dinyctis commented on
“How pandora make list of similar albums in the album page, or the…” (1) last month

Dinyctis commented on
“Major/Minor Key Tonality” last month

Recent Journals

Some Pandora-related groups by kylefreeman | 23 Jan 2009 | Add comment

Weekly Top Artists

Overall Unique to this Group

1	Air	3
1	Coldplay	3
1	Hans Zimmer	3
4	Pelican	2
4	Craig Armstrong	2
4	Eagles of Death Metal	2
4	Kamelot	2
4	Hoobastank	2
4	John Powell	2
4	Fu Manchu	2

Shoutbox

Leave a comment. Log in to Last.fm or sign up (it’s free).

jthorne5 wrote:
last week

Pandora seems to be inconsistent with their use of "a use of..." versus "use of..." (e.g. "a subtle use of vocal harmony" vs. "subtle use of strings") I usually drop the initial article to maintain consistency. It looks like Wikipedia does the same: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Music_Genome_Project_attributes

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Korrun wrote:
June 2009

exdeathbr: The "well known composer" descriptor and other useless descriptors for classical music were very disappointing. Pandora did such a good job with other styles, but completely dropped the ball on classical.

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Dinyctis wrote:
June 2009

The discussion page is open btw :D

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VincentVanGogh wrote:
June 2009

The descriptors are more for their algorithm and less for users. Generally anything can be a descriptor and the ones that don't really influence the performance will be weighted far less. (this topic should probably be a thread.)

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exdeathbr wrote:
June 2009

One question: Why pandora has some descriptors like the descriptor called A well know composer, in what this descriptor will help in finding similar music??

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VincentVanGogh wrote:
June 2009

You can search for a song on Pandora to find the tags. e.g. http://www.pandora.com/music/song/michael+jackson/thriller

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Dinyctis wrote:
May 2009

Muldertje - I don't think so. The only thing I can recommend is to use a proxy to access Pandora so you can view the tags :D

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Muldertje wrote:
May 2009

Okey I dont use Pandora (tried once, but not able in Holland) but these tags sound so much better. Is there any way to auto tag songs with what Pandora says them to be?

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VincentVanGogh wrote:
May 2009

Yeah, I also leave off leading articles too. "a clear focus on recording studio production" becomes "clear focus.. etc. If I ever get the time and motivated, I'll make a tool to automate all of the descriptor tagging.

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Dinyctis wrote:
April 2009

Yeah, what i did when I had to use that tag was to just leave out the apostrophe. There's other tags like that. Another is "slide/pedal steel guitars." I just used "or" instead of the slash so I have slide or pedal steel guitars. Up to you guys how to handle that stuff :D

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exdeathbr wrote:
April 2009

last.fm dont let us create a tag called a good dose of acoustic guitar pickin' according to that search www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&as_qdr=all&num=100&q=%22a+good+dose+of+acoustic+guitar+pickin%27%22++site%3Apandora.com&btnG=Search this descriptor is used in 6220 songs in pandora. That is because of the ' at the end of the descriptor.

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Dinyctis wrote:
March 2009

Check out this tag that Pandora spat at me for "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" by "High Contrast." sampledelia compositional qualities

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Dinyctis wrote:
February 2009

Do you guys have any suggestions as to a catchier group description? (Upper right corner).

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VincentVanGogh wrote:
February 2009

nice comment on major key tonality. only way i would've found this group. i think we add most of these tags with the api. i'll be looking into that.

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Dinyctis wrote:
October 2008

Woo :D

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Sirianni wrote:
October 2008

And Then There Were Three

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