The Music Genome Project is a musical analysis project seeking to "capture the essence of

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

at the most fundamental level" using various attributes to describe songs and mathematics to connect them together into an interactive map. The Music Genome Project covers five music genres: Pop/Rock, Hip-Hop/Electronica, Jazz, World Music, and Classical. Any given song is represented by approximately 450 "genes" (

analogous Analogy is a comparison or correspondence between two things (or two groups of things) because of a third element that they are considered to share. In logic, it is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as oppose ...

to trait-determining

gene In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...

s for

organisms An organism is any living thing that functions as an individual. Such a definition raises more problems than it solves, not least because the concept of an individual is also difficult. Many criteria, few of them widely accepted, have been pr ...

in the field of

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinians, Augustinian ...

). Each gene corresponds to a characteristic of the music, for example, ''gender of lead vocalist'', ''prevalent use of groove'', ''level of distortion on the electric guitar'', ''type of background vocals'', etc.

Rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wale ...

and

pop Pop or POP may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Pop music, a musical genre Artists * POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade * Pop! (British group), a UK pop group * Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band Album ...

songs have 150 genes,

rap Rapping (also rhyming, flowing, spitting, emceeing, or MCing) is an artistic form of vocal delivery and emotive expression that incorporates " rhyme, rhythmic speech, and ommonlystreet vernacular". It is usually performed over a backin ...

songs have 350, and

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

songs have approximately 400. Other genres of music, such as

world The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that Existence, exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk ...

and classical music, have 300–450 genes. The system depends on a sufficient number of genes to render useful results. Each gene is assigned a number between 0 and 5, in half-integer increments. The Music Genome Project's database is built using a methodology that includes the use of precisely defined terminology, a consistent frame of reference, redundant analysis, and ongoing quality control to ensure that data integrity remains reliably high. Given the vector of one or more songs, a list of other similar songs is constructed using what the company calls its "matching algorithm". Each song is analyzed by a musician in a process that takes 20 to 30 minutes per song. Ten percent of songs are analyzed by more than one musician to ensure conformity with the in-house standards and

statistical reliability In statistics and psychometrics, reliability is the overall consistency of a measure. A measure is said to have a high reliability if it produces similar results under consistent conditions:It is the characteristic of a set of test scores that r ...

. The Music Genome Project was first conceived by Will Glaser in late 1999, and populated with musicological input from

Tim Westergren Timothy Brooks Westergren (born December 21, 1965) is a co-founder of Pandora. Biography Westergren was born in 1965 in Minneapolis. He attended boarding school, Cranbrook Kingswood, during his high school years. He graduated from Stanford Univer ...

in early 2000. In January 2000, they joined forces with

Jon Kraft Jon Kraft is an American business executive best known as a co-founder of Pandora Media, Inc. and its former CEO. He also co-founded Thrively, LiftOff, Big Stage Entertainment and Stanford Technology Group. Additionally, he has previously wor ...

to found Savage Beast Technologies to bring their idea to market. The Music Genome Project was developed in its entirety by Pandora Media and remains the core technology used for

Pandora Radio Pandora is a subscription-based music streaming service owned by the broadcasting corporation Sirius XM that is based in Oakland, California in the United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the " Music Genome Proje ...

, its

internet radio Internet radio, also known as online radio, web radio, net radio, streaming radio, e-radio and IP radio, is a digital audio service transmitted via the Internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not ...

service. Although there was a time when the company licensed this technology for use by others, today it is limited for use only by its users.

Intellectual property

"Music Genome Project" is a registered

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...

in the United States. The mark is owned by the company Pandora Media, Inc."Music Genome Project" US Trademark: No. 2731047

United States Patent Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Ale ...

The Music Genome Project is covered by which shows William T. Glaser, Timothy B. Westergren, Jeffrey P. Stearns, and Jonathan M. Kraft as the inventors of this technology. The patent has been assigned to Pandora Media, Inc. With that initial patent filed, most of the intellectual property associated with Glaser's founding algorithm remains a trade secret to this day. The full list of attributes for individual songs is not publicly released, and ostensibly constitutes a

trade secret A trade secret is a form of intellectual property (IP) comprising confidential information that is not generally known or readily ascertainable, derives economic value from its secrecy, and is protected by reasonable efforts to maintain its conf ...

References

External links

"The Music Genome Project"
��short historical statement by Tim Westergren
Patent Number 7003515—Consumer item matching method and system

* ttps://twit.tv/shows/netnight/episodes/6 Inside the Net Interview with Tim Westergren of Pandora Media
Interview with Tim Westergren
March 23, 2007
Interview with Tim Westergren about the Music Genome Project and Pandora
video
The first music of genes by Jean-claude Perez 1994 SACEM GEN0694
Online music and lyrics databases

Intellectual property

See also

References

Further reading

External links