Community Blog - Page 6

I’m a huge fan of Neil Young. So much, that an old friend once half-joked that Neil Young is my John Lennon. Obviously, I was thrilled to learn that Young’s new documentary and soundtrack Coastal gets released today. Daryl Hannah directed the film and it’s about his post-Covid return to the stage as a solo performer. The soundtrack blends live takes of newer songs and older fan favorites. To my ears, the two main standouts include a haunting, threadbare reworking of “Expecting To Fly,” easily my favorite song of Young’s during his time with Buffalo Springfield. But it was a stripped-down version of “Vampire Blues” that stopped me in my tracks – this performance is peeled to the proto-grunge marrow of vocals and a heavily overdriven electric guitar. It’s a timely translation that features Young crooning over the heavy, tube-driven distortion of “Old Black,” his famously modified 1953 Les Paul, plugged into a 1959 Fender Tweed Deluxe amplifier that’s so hot-rodded, his techs usually train two fans on the back of it, to ensure the amp doesn’t ignite and catch fire. Of course, listening to this incredible rendition of the song just made me want to revisit its origins – and my favorite era of his music – the Ditch Trilogy.

Come see who was featured this month!

This month: Celebrating women’s history month, new AMP badges, community playlists, and new AMP campaign & program pages.

Audio Journal Of A Music Curator

In 2017, I started working as a contractor for Pandora in Oakland. Pandora was creating their on-demand streaming service, integrating it with their classic radio service, and I joined a team optimizing music metadata for this launch. I took to it right away, loved the work and the people there, continued on, and SiriusXM eventually hired me full-time.

The Future of the Music Genome Project®: Unlocking the Long Tail

Twenty-five years ago, the Music Genome Project® was conceived as a solution to the cold start problem in music recommendation. A dedicated team of trained musicologists has spent a quarter century painstakingly analyzing millions of songs — categorizing instrumentation, genre, and mood, mapping rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic structures, and even conducting lyrical analysis.

To date, we’ve analyzed over 2.2 million songs. While this is an impressive achievement, it represents only a small fraction of all the music that exists. So, what’s next for the Music Genome Project?