Seeking an edge in the online radio space, MSN has discreetly brought in music recommendation engine Pandora to power its service, MSN Radio. Since its debut last November, Pandora's free
recommendation system--dubbed the Music Genome project--has loads of media coverage and over 1 million monthly visitors, according to comScore. By contrast, MSN Radio's monthly visitors dropped 9
percent to 2.5 million from October 2005 to October 2006. Pandora users type in the names of bands or songs and instantly begin hearing tracks that the system considers similar. By rating songs and
artists, users can then refine suggestions. Forty-five Pandora analysts rank 15,000 songs a month on 400 various characteristics. The co-branding tie-up was first reported Tuesday on CNet's News.com
blog.
