It's tricky, sometimes, finding music that I like. There's a lot of stuff I'll listen to, and even enjoy, given the chance. (Those who know me know of my prodigous MP3 collection. If I put the entire archive on shuffle play, it goes without repeating for almost two months.) Music that really jumps out and grabs me, and stays in my shuffle rotation for weeks and months, rather than hours and days, is harder to come by.

Long long ago I blew through the 'new releases' section and dug into the oldies and mined the electronica and jazz and... well. I ask friends for recommendations, and I keep my eye open for new stuff. But as I poke around in obscure corners it gets harder and harder to find stuff that really jumps out at me without spending huge amounts of time hunting and asking and googling and so on.

Today, byrne from predicate.org posted a link to Pandora. Created by the Music Genome Project, it cross-references hojillions of songs and artists, creating taste matrixes based on the listening habits of folks all over the net. I logged on and typed in Pepe Deluxe, an old Emperor Norton band I like. I wasn't expecting much.

"Pepe Deluxe features electronica roots, funk influences, danceable beats, heavy backbeat, and vocal samples. Here's a song by Amon Tobin that's similar. It features a slow moving bass line, synth tweaking, a highly synthetic sonority, and prevalent use of groove." Well. That certainly got my attention. I love Amon Tobin -- I have his entire back catalog -- but the spot-on description of that specific song's peculiarities had me interested.

In the first ten minutes of listening I found two songs by bands I'd never heard of whose styles push my buttons in all the right ways. The Horror, by RJD2, and Rubber, by Williamson. Excellent, scrumptious even. There are a few duds in the mix, but I'm really shocked. Naturally, you can rate individual songs as they shuffle through the playlist, tailoring individual 'stations' to your tastes. The first 10 hours of the service are free, with yearly subscriptions weighing in at $36 a yeah. So very tempting.