The Music Genome Project is an effort to "capture the essence of

music Music is generally defined as the The arts, art of arranging sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Exact definition of music, definitions of mu ...

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 to trait-determining

gene In biology, the word gene (from , ; "... Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a b ...

s for

organisms In biology, an organism () is any living system that functions as an individual entity. All organisms are composed of cells ( cell theory). Organisms are classified by taxonomy into groups such as multicellular animals, plants, and f ...

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 Augustinian friar worki ...

). 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 and

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

songs have 150 genes, rap 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, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a majo ...

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

world In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

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. 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 Radio. Biography Westergren was born in 1965 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Minneapolis. He attended boarding school, Cranbrook Educational Community, Cranbrook Kingswood, d ...

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 and previously worked for a number of ...

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 Sirius XM Holdings based in Oakland, California, United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the " Music Genome Project" — a means of classifying in ...

, its

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

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 type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from oth ...

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 Alex ...

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 Trade secrets are a type of intellectual property that includes formulas, practices, processes, designs, instruments, patterns, or compilations of information that have inherent economic value because they are not generally known or readily a ...

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