OPENING THE MUSIC BOX

Pandora is a neat site that helps you find new music to love. You give it a couple of artists you like, and it plays a customized streaming radio station for you filled with the music you said you liked and other music you might not have heard of. I gave it Peter Gabriel and Alanis Morrisette. It came back with David Bowie and late [i.e. recent] Cyndi Lauper. I'm a huge Bowie fan, so that was a pretty good guess. Instead of using an Amazon-style algorithm ("customers who liked Peter Gabriel's Passion soundtrack also bought the soundtrack to The Passion of the Christ"), it uses "genomics," attempting to identify the flavor of the music ("loose chord structure, syncopated beat").

Worth a listen.