Not so long ago nor very far away, we all got our information from the same places. Three TV networks, a couple of local stations and a rock radio station or two. It gave us a common, if narrow, view of the world. Families would gather in their living rooms on Sunday night to watch Ed Sullivan. It was through that media funnel that a phenomenon such as The Beatles could be created. Record labels controlled who released recordings. Radio controlled what we heard. They were tied together through the magic of payola.

When I began teaching there were at most a dozen tunes that almost every student wanted to know. Knowing their favorite radio station told me what they wanted to play. As the stations became more and more narrowly programmed the audience became more fragmented. Then came the iPod. Fewer young people listen to radio each year. It is no longer the soundtrack of their lives. So where, I asked, do they hear new music? iTunes, MySpace, word of mouth, TV shows and websites like Pandora.com. Thanks, Jordan, for that one!

Pandora is a miraculous website where you create a “station” by entering a song or artist you like. It then finds similar songs by various artists and plays them for as long as you care to listen—for free! The songs are picked by comparing their musical “genes”. 150-500 attributes of the song are analyzed, rated and compared. Songs with similar characteristics are added to your play list. Search Wikipedia for “Music Genome Project” or see the Pandora.com FAQ for a list of these attributes. I encourage all students to examine these lists for ideas about how different styles of music are expressed.

I don’t believe that The Beatles could happen today. Instead of getting past a single record company or network gatekeeper, an artist today must find a way onto many individual play lists compiled from multiple sources. I have come up against this in marketing my music.

I don’t know how Pandora.com chooses their music so let’s try an experiment. Log on to Pandora.com and attempt to create a “JW Hanberry” play list. You’ll get a response that they never heard of JW Hanberry but will check it out. If enough of you do so, maybe they will. In the myth of Pandora only Hope was left when she released her jar full of evils on the world. I hope you’ll all play along. Let’s see if Pandora will turn me loose on the world.

Until then, play hard,

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