“However things play out for Pandora as a business, its approach is worth understanding if you’re interested in the future of listening. It’s the “social” theories of music-liking that get most of the attention these days: systems that connect you with friends with similar tastes, or that rely on “collaborative filtering” strategies that cross-match your music-consumption habits with those of like-minded strangers. These popular approaches marginalize traditional gatekeepers; instead of trusting the talent scout, the radio programmer or the music critic, you trust your friends (actual or virtual), or maybe just “the crowd.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/magazine/18Pandora-t.html?em

Record Club: Velvet Underground & Nico “Femme Fatale” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

http://sites.google.com/site/sxsw2009torrent/