The music genome project is an attempt to create the most comprehensive analysis of music, ever.

It "sets 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."

So I decided to give Pandora a go. You enter in a band name and it consequently creates a 'station' around this band and plays you a stream of similar styled songs. I decided to to throw Pandora a 'curve-ball' so I entered in 'Aphex Twin'. This is what happened:

1. Broken Spindles - To Die, For Death (Interesting recommendation. The track wasn't very electronic at all but apparently the band has released electronic tracks in the past.
2. The Dirty Projectors - Finches' Song at Oceanic Parking Lot (Excellent fit. Ambient experimental track with eerie Antony Jonston style vocals)
3. M83 - Until the Night is Over (excellent fit)
4. Moby - Alone (Not convinced. Admittedly a pre-'play' track so less dancey but not really pure ambient and electronic)
5. Kiyo - Sunset Vibe (excellent fit)
6. LFO - Brown (excellent fit)
7. Neotropic - Train to Katoomba (excellent fit)
8. High Contrast - Love sick (Drum 'n Bass style grooves but not too fast. Excellent recommendation considering that Aphex Twin released the 1999 Richard D. James album consisting of mainly experimental Drum 'n Bass)
9. Deadly Avenger - We Took Pelham (excellent fit)
10. Autechre - Silver Side (excellent fit)

Give it a go and see what you think. I think it has huge potential and there's a feedback system in place so that you can get it to 'correct' it's submissions to you. I'm going to keep playing with it a bit more to see whether it's working from a US-centric music pool or a large international one. I was very impressed with the 'Aphex Twin station' it generated for me. Quality electronic tracks from some very obscure international artists.