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I think pandora had the best recommendations - because it was based on real human input, not AI and not even "group think".

Sadly many years ago pandora bacame US only, so I couldnt use it (did not bother with VPN).

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Yeah. 100% agree here. The Pandora algorithm was an absolute breath of fresh air relative to every other recommendation system. Just constantly surfacing new and interesting music that I had never heard of but was exactly what I liked. I spent so long hunting for info on how they achieved it and if their taxonomies had ever been open sourced.

The Pandora algorithm -- and Pandora's positioning -- is truly a product of its time. You'll want to look into the Music Genome Project (whose very name dates it; the Human Genome Project finished in 2003), but equally influential was the big labels' stranglehold on legal music distribution. When Pandora started and for years of profitability, they had no deals with major record labels, instead promoting small indie artists on the basis of their recommendation engine. If they were going to survive, that engine had to be _excellent_.

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