My Enya-Centered Radio Station

I've blogged before about the wonderful site Pandora, a service provided by the so-called Music Genome Project. This is the online "radio" station (I hate referring to Internet music streaming sites as "radio", btw) that lets you indicate an artist or song (or a few) and then it will play songs that its search engine considers musically similar. As I've said before, this didn't work so well when I tried Pink Floyd or Jethro Tull, but I think that is because what I like about those groups is unique to those groups (or nearly so). But this approach works quite nicely for the one "station" I've created that I use regularly, namely my Enya-related collection of music. My intention here was to create a playlist that was heavy on Enya's music, but that included soothing music from other artists, mostly women vocalists, that is good to listen to as background music while working at my desk or reading. Doing a few searches at Pandora, its seems several other Enya fans have done exactly the same thing!

My results as of now are as follows. I've "approved" 55 songs as being ones I like -- so these get repeated now and then in the playlist. I've rejected 61 songs as being ones I don't like -- so these will never be played again on my "station". Then many more -- perhaps 100 or so -- have been played at least once and I didn't vote them up or down: either I was ambivalent at that point about them, or more often, I was just busy and didn't have time to stop what I was doing to click yeah or nay.

Of the 55 songs I've "approved", 18 are from Enya. Since I like every one of her songs, that is no surprise. And I hope it helps to reinforce to the system what I am looking for. The "Theme from Harry's Game", by Clannad, was an early and obvious song to be included in this playlist -- though for some reason it gets played an inordinate number of times (perhaps it has been approved by so many people out there that it gets weighted in the system a bit too much?). Then there is Annie Lennox's famous "No more 'I Love You's'", which I like enough to include in this playlist. There is one Loreena McKennit song ("Blacksmith") so far, and even one Crosby and Nash ("Where Will I Be?") which I was glad to hear as I really like CSNY of course. And then the song "May it Be", by Lisa Kelly (and also a version by Hayley Westenra), which is a song I know from one of the Lord of the Rings movies. Most of the other artists on my "approved" list have been new ones for me, which is great.

But the one new song that sticks out as one I really like a lot is from an artist I had heard of previously, but that I wasn't very familiar with: Sarah Brightman. Her song "Free" is incredible. I'm probably going to plunk down the 99 cents to buy it outright from iTunes. Her song "Beautiful" has also made my playlist.

A few arists have songs on both my approved and rejected listings so far. The aforementioned Annie Lennox is one, and the famous Yanni is another. A group called Secret Garden is also batting .500 for me so far. A few famous artists that have a tune on my reject list include Abba, Enigma, Heart, Linda Rondstadt, and Phil Collins.

Anyway, if you have broadband, are interested in expanding your musical interests, and have a specific idea for a playlist theme -- or just want to experiment with the suggestion system to see what happens -- then I strongly urge you to give Pandora a try!