Things threatening our employment at See Management this week.

There's a new sound blowing in the wind this week at See Management, and it's got us all frothed up and running over to the MAC for tinkering every five or ten:


Pandora is like that friend we all have that doesn't necessarily have a real job and spends all of their time rummaging through crates trying to unearth long-forgotten, best-not-remembered 12-inch versions of records like this one (from our personal collection):


You know the guy- he was into Wilco before they even became a group, schooled you on the Cool Kids two years ago, and knows how to pronounce Lykke Li. Well, if that guy downloaded every LP and EP he ever had into your computer, and then crafted a playlist based on your mood right then and there, played indefinitely, and only stopped when you said stop- that would be like Pandora.

Here's how it works: you want to hear a certain song or a group, you go to Pandora, enter it, and Pandora creates an internet radio station based on your entry. And they're good. Pandora is the creation of a sinster-sounding thing called the Music Genome Project. It's actually just a team of fifty musician/analysts that listens to each song individually and breaks down every track along about 400 (give or take) different category lines. Each song is then entered into their database with each of the criteria attached, which is how the program learns to relate each song to the next. It's kind of spooky. We are obsessed.

Here are a few of our suggestions for Songs/Groups that should keep your head bobbing or your navel gazed-at, depending on your taste:

1. Be True to Your School, The Beach Boys
2. Need U Bad, Jazmine Sullivan
3. Enter Sandman, Metallica
4. Ete Hit, Omnikrom
5. Panic!, The Smiths
6. Portland, Oregon, Loretta Lynn
7. Carmina Burana, Carl Orff
8. I Can't Go For That (No Can Do), Hall & Oates
9. Pop The Glock, Uffie
10. Don't Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult

If you can keep from obsessing about your next Pandora Station, you're better folks than us. Get into it!