In praise of Pandora

In praise of Pandora

Just wanted to jot a note recommending Pandora to anyone who hasn’t heard of it.

Pandora is a kind of internet radio station with a twist- you create your own stations by giving them a song or an artist and they create a station based on that and play you similar music based on what they call the “music genome project“- “…these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.” It sounds complicated, but it really isn’t- you plug in, say, “Paperback Writer” and it will play songs based on that- songs with a similar feel, but not just by the same artist, so you may be introduced to music you’ll really like but may not have heard otherwise. You can also combine stations you have created to get a broader mix.

It also has what it calls “genre” stations, for example this week I’ve been listening to Christmas Music, and I found I could refine that further into Classical Christmas Music- nice to play when I’m working in the church.

Pandora is free to listen to for up to 40 hours per month (you do have to put up with the very occasional ad), but you can also purchase unlimited hours for the rest of a month if you go over for 99 cents. I upgraded to what they call Pandora One, which costs $36 a year, but gives you unlimited hours, no ads and a slightly higher quality audio stream. Partly because I listen so much, but also because I believe in supporting products I really like 🙂 And I do listen a lot- I have it playing on my computer at work almost all of the time I’m in my office, I play it over the sound system in the church when I’m working alone in there, I play it at home when I’m doing housework (our Sony Blu-ray has it built in), and I sometime play it over my phone when I’m out walking the dog.

Anyhow, check it out if you like music and have access to a computer- you can see my list of stations here (or in the sidebar to the left).


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