Pandora Radio

I don't exactly know if this belongs here, but it is one of the finer things out on the internet.

If you haven't heard of it, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Pandora.com

It is an internet radio station that you can program just by entering either a favorite artist or song. The nice people who run this website have created something called the "Music Genome" which is a data base of recorded music that makes it possible to play the music you'll like based on what you request.

You can create any number of stations for yourself and each station can have more than one artist or song as a seed. As the station plays, you can tweak it. If it plays a song you don't like, you can give it the thumbs down. It won't play that song again and it will shy away from other songs that are too much like it. Conversely, songs that you like, you can give a thumbs up to.

It's great for me because it will play music from artists I've never heard of who I'm a big fan of now.

I have a Louis Jordan/Fats Waller station that is my favorite. I have a Leon Redbone station I like too. When I feel like some good Rock, it's Van Morrison or Creedence Radio.

Check it out, it's great.

+1

I have Pandora running almost 100% of the time I'm at the computer. Just make sure you thumb up and thumb down the music you like and don't like. One problem with Pandora though is that it sometimes gets stuck playing the same music over and over. The way to get around this is to press the "guide us" button and tell it not to play the song for 30 days. Another trick is when there's a song that fits the type that you want to listen to but just don't like, thumb it up then have it not play for 30 days.

+1, if I'm at work Pandora is on. And their new(ish) stand-alone app works great.

Nice, I was thinking "That sounds cool!" When I get there I'm already logged in with 3 stations made...

I find new things every day!

I love pandora! It's my preferred method of listening to music during the day.

I've heard about this before, and I've finally decided to give it a shot. Thanks for the reminder; I hope it works out...or else I'll have to...stop using it?

So I've been using Pandora, and I have a few comments. For a while I was thumb upping songs that I liked; I thought it would play more songs like those. But then I discovered that giving a song thumbs up actually means that you want to hear that song more, and before long, all I was getting were songs that I'd given a thumbs up. So no more thumb upping.

I also found out that giving a song a thumbs down means you don't like the artist, not that you don't like the song. If you thumb down two songs by an artest, you'll not hear any more from them on that station. Bummer! There are some great artists with a few bad songs/CD's; I really think it should be on a song basis, not an album basis.

Lastly, it seems to me that each station can only have a certain amount of songs. Even since I've stopped giving the thumbs up to songs entirely, I have a station that I listen to a lot, and I'm pretty sure it's only playing the same songs over and over. I wonder if that's a lisencing thing. It's really too bad, because I know they have a ton of other musical content, but I'm not getting to hear it. I'm going to try moving songs to other, more narrowly defined stations to see if that gets me more content. If not, it's safe to say I'm done with Pandora.

Try telling it to not play certain songs for a month. It'll cause it to pull in more music. Also, up or downing a song isn't necessarily all about the artist, though it is true if you down 2 songs, that artist won't ever play. Something I discovered is to up songs that fit the type that I was looking for but just didn't like and tell it to not play it for 30 days. Every time you up a song, the song base that it looks for gets a little bigger (or at least better defined). Also, if there are ever any songs you want to take off the down list, you can always edit the station. Every song you've ever upped or downed is listed there.

It is a little annoying though to hear it only play the same songs over and over. Like I said, just tell it to not play certain songs for a month- it'll bring in some fresh content. I have a station that was for Harry Connick, Jr., and it was stuck in the same rut. I told it not to play a few songs, then it magically started playing a ton of other stuff and now it's a great station! It's all about getting the right ups and downs.