Because that’s what you do. You go to www.pandora.com, you tell Pandora an artist you like, and Pandora creates a station that plays all kinds of music that sounds like the artist you said you like – and it’s often artists you’ve never heard of. While each song streams, you tell Pandora whether you like it or not using simple thumbs up/thumbs down icons. This further establishes your likes and dislikes. And if you REALLY like a song, Pandora gives you the chance to quickly purchase the song from i-Tunes or the physical CD from Amazon. And did I mention the service a free? Well, the bottom-level version is…which is perfectly feasible, by the way.

So, right now you are probably asking yourself, “How the hell does Pandora know all this?” That’s where the REAL magic comes into play, my friend. Pandora was born out of the Music Genome Project, one of those mammoth “Is someone really doing that?” / “Why didn’t I think of that?” undertakings. According to Pandora’s site, a group of music lovers - and, obviously, nerdy mathematical thinkers - got together in 2000 and decided to start analyzing music. Like, REALLY analyzing music.

The main idea was to drill music down to its core, applying hundreds of attributes (called “genes” – get it?) into a pool called the Music Genome. The genes cover everything from the instruments used to the arrangements, the lyrics, and even the vocal harmonies. “It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records,” says founder Tim Westergen. “It’s about what each individual song sounds like.”

Using these genes from the Music Genome Project, Pandora the radio player finds connections between songs and mathematically determines a playlist for you that (hopefully) meets your likes and dislikes. Best of all, if it’s a song you don’t like, you can just tell Pandora you don’t like it and move along to the next song.

Let’s take an example – one of my stations is Sufjan Stevens. The first song that’s played on my Sufjan station is…well, Sufjan. The station always starts with the source. It’s the song “Springfield” from the album Avalanche, and here are some of the features associated with the song (aka its genes):

Folk roots
A subtle use of vocal harmony
Intricate melodic phrasing
A vocal-centric aesthetic
Minor key tonality
A prominent banjo part
Electric pianos
Acoustic rhythm guitars
Narrative lyrics

Next up after Sufjan on his station is a song called “Your Scars” by a band called Charlemagne. If you want to know why Pandora is playing any particular song, there’s actually a way of finding out via an expandable menu. In this case, Pandora is playing the song because “it features mellow rock instrumentation, folk influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, and a vocal-centric aesthetic.”

Are you beginning to see how this could possibly become addictive?

It’s fun to see the connections that Pandora makes between songs – even more fun when it’s other songs from your own collection. In my case, Pandora plays “Autumn’s Child” by Devendra Banhart and “I Could Be Nothing” by the Great Lake Swimmers, both songs in my own music collection (and unsurprising connections with Sufjan). There are always surprises as well, though. In my case, Jack Johnson – who knew there was a connection between him and Sufjan?

I could go on for hours, and there are loads of details – mostly positive, but a couple negative – that I haven’t even touched on. So my recommendation is to go out to Pandora and give it a whirl. Just remember that you have to go to bed before the sun comes up. And this will be difficult if it’s 10 p.m. when you start building your stations. Trust me.