Yesterday I became aware of a site called Pandora (no kick back, payment or affiliation of any kind for the link) Pandora began what they call a Music Genome Project (registered trademark) … About this same time we began a project at my place of work at the time (Intuit) and we called it the genome project.
The business end of our project goals was to get to the smallest particle of what made what happen when and where in the QuickBooks program. QuickBooks had grown very quickly and it had become a pieced together bit of wonder – but how did all the pieces work together? The team I had on this project were the BEST of the BEST! and they delved deeper than anyone thought they would be able to. They embarked into an unknown territory. Their focus was to uncover the genome of QuickBooks.
We went to Mountain View a few times to educate the programmers of the program about what the program THEY built did, why, and what happened IF … since I was on the management side (the *YOU CAN DO IT* motivating part) a lot of what my team did went right over my head, but I knew what they did made a HUGE difference in what happened going forward.
We knew what our goal was we carefully planned what to do and then we acted upon what we found. The potential was HUGE!
Unfortunately (in my view) the bottom line ruled the future and Intuit is where Intuit is now because of that … neither here, neither there – BUT …
The Genome projects of the year 2000 lay the ground work for the future – one of which is Pandora:
On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.
Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.
Since we started back in 2000, we’ve carefully listened to the songs of tens of thousands of different artists – ranging from popular to obscure – and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.
It has been quite an adventure, you could say a little crazy – but now that we’ve created this extraordinary collection of music analysis, we think we can help be your guide as you explore your favorite parts of the music universe.
We hope you enjoy the journey.
Tim Westergren
Founder
The Music Genome Project
If we lived in Oakland California – I’d be banging on their door daily – I want to work for you! I want to work for you! I WILL work for you 
But since we don’t and moving to California is HIGHLY unlikely – this blog post will suffice for now. I have created three seperate stations so far and I am amazed – in awe – in wonderful WONDER as to what they have created.
It is my hope the project my team undertook in the year 2000 to map out the QuickBooks genome has rendered that product as useful and awesome as the one undertaken by Pandora.
Give it a listen – try it out and see what you think – I’d LOVE to hear your comments about this new media available to us all.
Thank You,
Evie
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