In a fascinating article in the New York Times, Rob Walker digs into the engine behind what makes Pandora tick. For the uninitiated, Pandora is a music streaming site that allows users to create stations based around particular artists and genres. Pandora then makes suggestions for new music based on user ratings and similarities between genres.

Walker’s story chronicles the development and implementation of the system that makes Pandora work: The music Genome Project. Founded a decade ago in Oakland, CA, Pandora  has archived, categorized and cross-referenced over 700,000 songs from 80,000 artists. The Times article outlines the incorporation of Indian music, and outlines the detailed parameters each song is evaluated by. After a tough fight last year over royalties, and the progress of the Performance Rights Act, Pandora seems poised to reach critical mass in the coming years.