Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Pandora Radio Needs to Hire People with More than a Superficial Knowledge of Music

I listen to Pandora radio from time to time. You can have different "stations" built around different recording artists, genres or composers. Their groupings of artists and composers often do not make sense. They say that Paul Dukas, who was considered one of the Impressionist composers along with Ravel and Debussy, is similar to Prokofiev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Khachaturian and Stravinsky. Dukas' most popular work is "The Sorcerer's Apprentice which was based on a poem by Goethe. Few of his pieces have survived. I think he destroyed many of his manuscripts. Madness, an English 2-Tone Ska band is grouped with metal bands. On the Sean Lennon radio they play Paul McCartney. They group John Cage with Erik Satie. Yes, Cage and Satie both composed pieces for piano, but their music and their approaches to music were very different. Satie is also grouped together with Debussy and Ravel. Satie was mostly known for his irreverent approach to music which can be seen in the titles to some of his pieces and in the instructions in his scores. He wrote "Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear," and in one of his his composition he says it should be played like a sparrow with a toothache. In some cases they focus on the early part of an artist's career. This is the case with Marianne Faithfull. She started out singing pop and rock, but over the years her style has changed. More recently she has recorded songs by Kurt Weill. Sometimes I have had to delete stations,because they play music completely unrelated to the music I want to hear. They need to have people with more that a superficial knowledge of music grouping artists and composers.
I have had similar experiences with Amazon.com. Their recommendations often do not make sense. Sometimes they will recommend a CD or DVD because it was released on the same day on which something I ordered had been released. I have bought some CD's by Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon on Amazon, and they have recommended CD's by Paul McCartney. Most people who are fans of Yoko Ono would definitely not be fans of Paul McCartney. To me his music is too sappy. Sometimes I look at their recommendations to see how far off they are. I have found some good things that way, but sometimes it is very funny to see the outlandish connections they make.

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