I think your main point is correct, but the Music Genome Project had experts humans listening to each and every song. It originally started out to build music-s

I think your main point is correct, but the Music Genome Project had experts humans listening to each and every song. It originally started out to build music-store recommendation kiosks (yes kids, music used to be sold in physical stores), and it took them 5 years to pivot to streaming audio. Given when they started, I expect that they just bought a lot of CDs to start. By the time they got into streaming, they of course had licenses. So Pandora didn't defy RIAA; they spent money and built business relationships, two things unavailable here.