Pandora Radio

Last June I wrote a very short post about Pandora Internet Radio. I'm mentioning it again because it's hands-down my favorite way to listen to music at home.

What is Pandora?

Pandora is a FREE internet streaming music site. Pandora allows you to setup personalized "radio stations" on your computer based on artists, songs & genres. There are no radio ads, just the advertising links on the site itself. You just get a constant feed of your music. If you like a song, give it the thumbs up. If you don't like a song, you can give it the thumbs down and it goes away. The longer you play a station the better it knows your taste. You can even "QuickMix" stations to get a good variety.

OK, all that's fine, but why do I like it so much? Several reasons....

- I only have so much music in my collection. Slick and I probably have 100 CD's & I've got gigs of music on top of that, but I sometimes I grow tired of listen to the same stuff.

- I hate the constant repeats on regular radio. Today I was in the car and they played some Finger 11. The DJ commented afterwards about how we've not heard Finger 11 in a while and he was glad he was able to play it for us. I'm thinking, WFT?!? I heard the same two songs 3 or 4 times on his very radio station last week alone. I don't even listen to that radio station much. Usually it's NPR or the iPod. What a crock of shit!

- New "to me" Music. I don't have regular access to college students anymore. I don't really like most popular music to begin with. I don't want to spend my $0.99 at iTunes on something I've never heard before. So, where do I find new music? Pandora plays songs based on my personal tastes. I like something, I can either access iTunes directly from Pandora OR make a note to myself to get the song later. I've discovered over a dozen folk artists this way. I've also re-discovered solid 70-80's rock after I did a Rush mix one night.

- It's such an easy way to get variety. Here's a list of some of the artists I've used to create my current "stations:"

The Wailin' Jennys, Amos Lee, Talking Heads, Violent Femmes, Weezer, Foo Fighters, The Chieftains, Jonathan Coulton, Rush, Indigo Girls...

I've QuickMix'ed all the folk music. If I get tired of that I can click on the Violent Femmes to get some 80-90's punk OR Rush for some 70-80's rock. When in doubt, there's always the Foo Fighters! It's that simple.

- Closing Shots

I'm listening to Pandora right now on the Amos Lee station. I'm listening to a White Stripes song I've never heard before called "We're Going to Be Friends." It's completely different from all the other stuff I've heard from them. It's cool and it would have never gotten on the radio. That's what I like about Pandora!

PS. The RIAA are a bunch of fools. I would say that more than 50% of my CD collection came from hearing a song someone "shared" with me. I heard and like the song enough that I eventually got a whole CD. Not anymore. Since I won't file-share, I only get to hear new songs from Pandora or the radio. And now, I'm much more likely to buy 1 or 2 songs from iTunes than to risk buying a whole CD. This is not an endorsement of piracy. But it is a rebuke on the RIAA and their strong-arm tactics. They're killing themselves with their current business model.