Our initial idea for Proteus was a Pandora-esq website that would let allow people at parties to enter different genres of music so everyone would be happy. We decided to call the project Proteus, the Greek god of versatility. We decided that collecting 200 songs from 6 different genres would be a good place to start because it was an obtainable ammount of songs to collect, but also allowed variety when listening to genres.

Creating the database

We decided to use a website called Django to create our database which held all of our music. We had to add tags to every song which took hours upon hours to complete. We used Pandora's Music Genome Project to aid us with the tags. The Genome Project is how Pandora works. Music experts have categorized every song on Pandora into hundreds of tags, and when a listener tends to like certain tags, Pandora spits out more songs with those tags. We used the tags that were availiable for those songs to our songs.

Coding

To create the actual website, we had to use HTML, the language that creates web pages. We designed a website where you would input 3 tags, and then a screen would open and start playing music from the genres you entered. A video plays that displays colors with a kaleidoscope effect. We used python to code that actual sorting part. Python is a multi-purpose coding language that coders use around the world. 

Originally we thought that the genres should be indie rock, electronic, pop, rap, reggaetron, and dancehall. In the end we added country because of mass appeal. 

Challenges

Challenges included learning two difficult languages in a short time, getting 200 songs, tagging them all, and learning how to create a website that played music. Luckily we got past all of these and created a working project. 

Next Steps

We would like to add more genres, more songs, and make the website run a little smoother.