Cable provides a valuable set of 24/7 commercial free music channels. These channels are only laughable when you look at the TV screen, which displays random artist facts and DMV-quality photography per song. For a more enjoyable Audio and Video marriage, VH1′s “Popup Video” fared better. Maybe Music Choice should employ some of that team.

My main peeve with Music Choice’s screen display is in how it provides basic song/album data. Its practice is to assign a song to an album on which it recently appeared, and its corresponding year of release. Such info is helpful if I want to walk down to the nearest Sam Goody and pick up the compact disc, but it doesn’t convey the track’s history. Here’s a Music Choice example: while playing “Good Vibrations” it will show the album “Best of the Beach Boys (2002).” True enough–but when was the song recorded?

Many music fans like myself want to know when a track was recorded, and on what ‘product’ it first appeared (a single, EP, album, soundtrack). It is understood that over time, a track will be remixed, remastered, and appear on new compilations. We are told that we are in a “post-album” era. All the more reason to not assign a track to a random compilation or re-release–unless you give the full history. Since Music Choice is unmarried to commerce–not only does it lack commericials, but it has no means to ‘click and purchase,’ then you would think it would want to share History of the Track (and since it shares so much random artist info, i.e. “The Hart sisters ran a lemonade stand in Tennesse as pre-teens”).

The web offers ample space to provide a full History of a track, and to list all available methods to purchase the track. iTunes does a good job of listing the many variations of a song, per release. (Search for ‘Walk the Line’)

Pandora does not.

Pandora is an excellent free web radio service that combines scientifically-inspired music research (“the music genome project”) with personal preferences to play songs it thinks you will like. For all the work it does in correlating and suggesting similar tracks, it lacks track history. Odd, because even on a per track basis, it offers a lot of information: a Review, a list of attributes, a link to Band Bio. Somewhere it forgot to offer Track history. It should nail down the meanings of “Recording” “Track” “song” “cut” “mixed” and “record” “album” so that we know what we are learning and seeking info about.

The standard measurement, from which the others relate, would be ‘track.’ That way, Pandora could state:
“This track (Good Vibrations) was cut (mixed down to record) May 1966 (based on various recording sessions).
“It first appeared as a single May 1966.”
“The first album on which it appeared: ‘Smiley Smile’, which is offered by Capitol as a 2fer (“Smiley Smile/Wild Honey”) (note: that info is relevant only to offline shoppers, unless you’re interested in record company packagings…although, those re-releases often coincide with remastering).
“This version is a stereo remix released 1990, when full album was remastered.”
“You can purchase this version online via ….”
“You can purchase other mixes of this song,(click ->).”
“Other bands that have recorded this song include…”
“To view other recordings of this song…”

Whew. Lot of info… TMI? Welp, that’s what the Internet offers. If one requests it (“More Info” link) one should be able to obtain this depth of info.

Now, in Part II I will explore the Pandora’s limitations in seeking to assign each track to an album.