What is Taxonomy?

Do you listen to Pandora on your cell phone?  Did you ever wonder how it works to match songs so that you can meet new artists and find new favorites?  Pandora is at its roots a system of taxonomy.  Taxonomy is from ancient Greek τάξις taxis, arrangement, and νομία nomia, method.  Taxonomy is a system for grouping and naming things, and is usually a term from biology and typically means seperating organisms into a hierarchy.

Remember the Systema Naturae created by Carolus Linnaeus? He organized a ranking scale limited to: kingdom, class, order, genus, and species. 

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This is not however, a website about science.  It's about music, well the science of music and how ranking music by computer was an idea that Alan Lomax had in 1959. The tradition of ranking music by genre was no new idea, but this project was different because it analyzed songs to see how they were connected.  The purpose of this website is to illustrate the similarities and differences between the Music Genome Project and Alan Lomax’s Cantometrics as systems of taxonomy.  Both Lomax and and Tim Westergren sought to use computers to define the essence of music by sorting it according to common attributes, for example tense or relaxed vocal quality; breathiness; short or long phrases.  Use the links below to learn more about the work of Alan Lomax and how it influenced the system used by Pandora and the Music Genome Project.



find out more about folklorist alan lomax
cantometrics
music genome project
GLobal JUKEBOX
your turn to be a musical taxonomist
In Conclusion

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