Okay Geek Farm
Pandora adds streaming Comedy stations
Ricardo Trejo
As if anyone actually demanded this, Pandora has now added over 10,000 clips from 700 different comedic personalities to their already impressive lineup. The stations went live yesterday, and are up for anyone who’s interested in listening to performances from people such as George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, and tons more. Using the Comedy Genome Project, which sounds ridiculous compared to its musical counterpart, Pandora has analyzed countless punchlines and was able to come up with a method to match up similar deliveries and styles one after another.
Sarcasm aside, this is a pretty interesting idea — just one that sorta crept on me that’s for sure. And I actually know a few friends who’d really dig this concept seeing as they’re always listening to their favorite comedian’s CDs while on their commute to work. Come to think of it, streaming comedy online for free doesn’t sound like such a crazy idea afterall.
Here’s what the company wrote on their blog about rolling out this new addition:
Tim (Founder)
Tom (Chief Technology Officer)
“Dear Listeners -
We’re excited to say that we are officially in the business of telling jokes! Starting now, you can launch personalized comedy stations on Pandora from any genre or comedian.
Adding comedians to the mix has been one of the top requests from our listeners, so we’ve taken the same approach to comedy as we have to music: carefully and deliberately analyzing comedic “bits” across a very large number of attributes to capture the style, delivery and content of each performance. It’s been a very fun experience, taking what we’ve learned in music and applying it to a whole new category. Now, instead of talking about “minor keys,” “falsetto,” and “extensive vamping,” our comedy-analysts capture “odd juxtaposition” (A horse walks into a bar…), “misdirection” and “spoonerisms” (a well-boiled icicle, instead of a well-oiled bicycle)…
We’ve had a great team of working comedians furiously analyzing what is now a collection of more than 10,000 sketches from more than 700 different comics and counting.
As with music, we hope that the Comedy Genome Project will let people enjoy comedy they know as well as discover new talent that they love. And for comedians everywhere we hope that Pandora can provide a great big new platform for new fans. There is surely nothing more important than helping the world laugh a little more!
We hope you’ll give it a whirl. Here are some quick options to get you started if you need some: Comedy Genres.
And, as always, don’t be shy about feedback, we love to hear from you.
Enjoy!”
Visit — Pandora Internet Radio (Comedy Genres)
