Aunt Sally is not the best predictor of your musical tastes. You frowned when she bought that Fiona Apple CD for your birthday, when really you wanted the new Cat Power disc. She misinterpreted your preference for "soulful, female-fronted piano vocalists."
Short of finding Aunt Sally a job at a record store, there's no way for her to accurately predict your musical tastes. Or is there?
Music fans are always searching for reliable ways to discover more music they'll like. Pandora.com, a music- streaming website, claims to recommend only songs you'll like, based on the suggestions you give it.
For those who voraciously consume new bands, or who proudly polish their 1,000-plus CD collections, the site may have little to offer. But the casual FM radio fan will find it the perfect time waster.
The site is basically a customizable Internet radio station, and an offshoot of the Music Genome Project, which purports to be one of the largest systematic studies of music in history.
"It's very much a marriage of music and technology," said Tim Westergren, founder of Oakland, Calif.-based Pandora.
Started in 2000, the Music Genome Project tries to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level, taking a song's attributes or "genes," like melody, harmony and rhythm and networking them with other songs.
Pandora.com is the result of that undertaking, a free Web-based service that suggests music based on a single song or artist. Users can create up to 100 individual "stations" under their profiles.
"It's a bit like primary colors, and how every color is a combination of the same basics," said Westergren. "We're trying to do that for music."
When users type in a song, Pandora's software looks at all its attributes and compares them with every other song in the database. Westergren estimated that Pandora's database now contains about 400,000 songs, and is adding another 8,000-10,000 songs per month. A team of 35 musicians - each with a minimum four-year music degree - works constantly to categorize songs based on the analysis of their "genes."
Michael Zapruder oversees the Music Genome Project for Pandora. He believes it sets itself apart from other customized Internet radio sites because it intentionally broadens people's horizons.
"We don't take into account the popularity of what we're recommending," said Zapruder, also a musician. "We try to have everything everybody knows, and then marry that to the boutique and indie labels. So when you type in 'Coldplay' you might listen to a band that you would have otherwise never found."
But Pandora.com also can recommend songs you already know and dislike - fitting, considering its namesake.
In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman on Earth, created by Zeus and endowed with all the gifts of the gods. She possessed a box that contained both the horrors and everlasting hope of mankind. When she opened it, everything escaped - good and bad.
A sample Pandora.com station created around indie rockers The Shins suggested everything from Def Leppard to Warren Zevon to Hootie and the Blowfish.
"I don't think it works very well, honestly. Or maybe my music tastes don't make any sense," said Steve Graham of Denver. "I tried to create Wilco and Weakerthans stations and they didn't work."
Other users have said it only suggests well-worn music.
"I have yet to hear it play a song I like but don't already own," said Boulder resident Jason Underwood. "I would think it would be able to work like Amazon.com's (system), where after just a few purchases it knows exactly what music you have and like."
But a system with 1.8 million subscribers is bound to produce diverse results. Since Pandora launched in November, nearly 16 million separate "stations" have been created on the site, according to the company. Each one offers users the ability to hone their playlists with feedback.
A "Guide Us" button presents choices like "I really like this song, play more like it," or "I'm tired of this song, don't play it for a month."
Rebecca Zisch, an on-air commentator for Nevada Public Radio, was surprised by Pandora's inventory of obscure rockabilly
"It knew the catalog, and instead of giving me other rockabilly music, which I didn't really want anyway, it pulled out these bands that sound like Dinosaur Jr. or old Buffalo Tom that I've never heard of and am really enjoying," she said.
Pandora's Zapruder said the service cannot predict the highly personal associations people have with most songs - and he would never want it to. That helps mitigate the creepy, Big Brother implications of a project that dissects art based on "objective" criteria.
"People listen to music through a social lens," said founder Westergren. "What makes a song really hum for somebody is an ephemeral quality."
Westergren sees a lot on the horizon for Pandora, from NPR-style advertising (i.e. quick plugs before and after programming) to making the service available on cellphones and in cars.
"There's so many bands, especially now, it's like a full-time job to keep up with them," said the Music Genome Project's Zapruder.
Depending on what comes out of the box, that can be both a blessing and a curse.
Staff writer John Wenzel can be reached at 303-820-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com. | 
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