JOLLY DAYS

Deezer

Pandora.com, the online radio site, never quite got it right because of the restrictions placed on it by the music companies. If you wanted to hear a steady diet of Tom Waits you would get one Tom Waits song and others they felt were related. Pandora fancied it up: it was a “music genome project”. But you wanted Waits, not an intern's judgment of what other things you would like.

Now a French company has done it — they negotiated an ad sharing deal with the music consortiums. Deezer is a site you can search for, say, Tom Waits, and get a long list that plays all…Tom Waits.

The library at present is not as large as you might like, but the idea is great, and despite a few glitches when setting up playlists (you have to register), deezer is very well implemented.

Here is a sample playlist:

First Sarkozy, now deezer.com — La France may be finding its way.