The people at Pandora.com are cool too, and responded right away to my suggestions. I was going to blog about how I thought they should tweak their interface and further thoughts on how cool it is, but instead I’ll just post the correspondence.
Hello Jordan
Great idea!  We actually are working on a user interface for advanced
users that will allow you to choose the musical attributes you like or
dislike with more precision. Soon, you will be able to state *why* you
like or dislike a song. For example “I don’t want to hear female
vocalists on this station.”
Meanwhile, here’s a suggestion. Try making stations based on a number of
individual songs that exemplify the sound you are looking for. Stations
based on an artist name will usually cover a broader range as Pandora
tries to cover the artist’s full range. You can add multiple songs to a
station by clicking the triangle next to the station name and selecting
“Add more music to this station”. Look here
<http://blog.pandora.com/faq/index.html#88> for more info on creating
and tuning Pandora stations.
Thanks for writing – we love feedback and we read absolutely everything!
Best regards,
Maggie @ Pandora
Wishing you all the best music in the new year!
Jordan wrote:
> Hi,
>Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â First of all I wanted to say that I *LOVE* Pandora. I’ve been
> using it for two days and I’ve already discovered so much great music
> on it. I feel SMARTER listening to the recommended music. It’s so good
> I’m actually learning from the music, not just being entertained by
> it. It’s the most sophisticated computerized recommendation system
> I’ve ever seen, with amazon recommendations being second.
>Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â While the 400 point analysis system is complex, the thumbs up /
> thumbs down rating system is not, and that would be my one suggestion
> for improvement. While I know you have to be careful with licenses–if
> you let the user have complete control over which qualities they want,
> it will be too easy to single out exactly the song they’re looking
> for–it’s too easy to let the playlist swing in the wrong direction
> with just the yes or no votes. I’ve had playlists change from afro
> cuban influences to classic jazz, when the afro cuban was *so
> good*…Or I’ll flag a song I don’t like because it’s too slow, and
> the system will flag against minor songs and play me slow major songs
> instead. I’ve gotten better at training the system–learning to
> abstain when it has the right idea but I don’t particularly like the
> song, or starting the playlist over–but having _some_ control over
> the properties, like “play me more fast songs” or something would be
> wonderful.
>Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â What a great project! Thanks so much for this wonderful free
> service.
>Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Jordan
Wow that is incredible feedback. How do they respond so thoughtfully so often? Anyway I’m going to link to this response to community at http://pandorastations.crispynews.com can be looking forward to that advanced player feature.
Come visit!
Tim