TOM FRANCIS
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Pandora’s Checkbox

Pandora, the brave internet radio system that tries to play new music you’ll like based on tonal qualities it shares with your favourite stuff, needs another button. At the moment you can tell it you love the song or hate it. You can also skip it without specifically expressing a dislike, which is handy when a song is your sort of thing but not quite what you feel like listening to at the moment. But increasingly I find I need one that says “Never, ever play anything like this ever again. But God damn this is good.”

Because it ignores all social stigma and other people’s opinions, because it’s quite often right, and because I’m playing it on my speakers in the office, it’s choices are sometimes a little embarrassing. It’s like someone suddenly pointing at you and saying “Somewhere, deep down, you’d quite like the fucking Cranberries.” No matter how fast you skip it, everyone knows who that was, and that it was picked for a reason.

I fear Pandora’s ambitious experiment may be doomed by fickle human whims, though. I loathed the first song it played to me when I rediscovered it recently, and when I went to give it a thumbs down, discovered that I’d already given it a thumbs up the last time it came on. Mind you, it’s just started playing Duran Duran, and it does have the appropriate button for that.