Discussion of Pandora Radio

[cardinals_fan]

I'm wondering what people think of Pandora Radio. For those who aren't familiar with it, Pandora is an online music player that selects music for you based on an initial selection and later ratings. I'm really impressed by it's accuracy. A description from them:

The Music Genome Project®

On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together 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.

Since we started back in 2000, we've carefully listened to the songs of tens of thousands of different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

It has been quite an adventure, you could say a little crazy - but now that we've created this extraordinary collection of music analysis, we think we can help be your guide as you explore your favorite parts of the music universe.

We hope you enjoy the journey.

Tim Westergren
Founder
The Music Genome Project
Your thoughts?

[wolfen69]

when i go over my friends house, that's all we listen to. great web based app.

[kavon89]

I love Pandora, I've listened to it for many years and have a dozen stations.

[Giant Speck]

I made a Pandora thread a while back but it died after only one reply.

I freakin' love Pandora. My iPod is full of music that I heard on Pandora.

[hanzomon4]

Discovered this on my iPhone... pure awesomeness

[cardinals_fan]

I made a Pandora thread a while back but it died after only one reply.

I saw an old thread from someone else as well, but started this instead of resurrecting it.

[Giant Speck]

Discovered this on my iPhone... pure awesomeness

AT&T seems to only give support for Pandora on their non-Windows phones.

The closest I've gotten to being able to listen to Pandora on my Blackjack II is to use the Skyfire browser, but since it's Flash capabilities are still limited, it won't let you enter text into Flash-based text entry boxes, therefore preventing you from logging into Pandora.

[sharon.gmc]

This is the first time that I've heard of it. I'm going to check this one out. Pandora Radio seems to be pretty good.

[Starlight]

I wanted to try it, but it says I'm living in the wrong country. :( I tried using web proxies, but then the Pandora player crashed while loading. Does anyone know a way to make Pandora work in this case?

[jwkolberg]

I love Pandora and have been listening to it for a few months. It's simple, easy to use, helps you discover new bands and has an incredible assortment of songs.

However, recently it seems like it is becoming more like regular radio in the sense that there are certain 'popular' artist who keep appearing on my stations who are nothing like what I normally listen to. It seems as if labels or bands are paying to get more playtime or something. This must be true because it does not make sense that Miley Cyrus continuously pops up on my indie-alt rock station, even after clicking thumbs-down numerous times.

I guess as it becomes more mainstream this is inevitable, and lesser known internet radio stations will take its place.

[geoken]

I listened to Pandora all the time before the RIAA killed it for all non-US residents.

The great thing about Pandora was their 'music genome' engine which didn't just recommend (aka. select the next song) based on simple stuff like artist tags, genre, etc. It actually analyzed the musical structure and recognized things like tempo and mood. Because of this it was able to provide you with non-mainstream, yet more precise results which I assume is also the reason the RIAA hated it so much.

[Giant Speck]

For those with Windows Mobile phones who haven't been able to get the Pandora application, I have attached the .cab file for it. Just download it to your phone and install.

I got it from this website: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3016069&postcount=126

I was on the Skyfire website trying to figure out if they had Pandora support yet, and I found the link to the website above.

It works great. It should work on Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1. I don't know about Windows Mobile 5, though.

[jimi_hendrix]

pandora rocks...i find i listen to it more than my owned songs on my iphone

[Firestem4]

I love Pandora Radio. Its a very good service and i have been apart of the community for over a year. I even fought for it when legislation was being pushed through congress about music royalties which if it would have gone through, would ahve completely crippled most, if not all internet based radio stations. Plus that would ahve only monopolized the record and music companies even more! (Called my local congressman for support. I got a personal letter of thanks from the president of Pandora when i wrote in about my support)

[GrandpaLeaman]

I love Pandora! I use the applet in AWN so I always have it close.

[Sunflower1970]

Love Pandora. Haven't used it in a while, but when I have, I've always discovered new artists that have financially benefited from me going out and buying their albums I otherwise would not have been familiar with.

[zmjjmz]

Using it now. My only complaint is that while the selection is huge, that's really only true for certain genres. I've been listening to tthe same songs for weeks now in Drum & Bass.

[namegame]

I used to use Pandora all the time. Then I found last.fm :P

[wrtpeeps]

Can't use pandora outside the land of the merkins, so last.fm it is.

Saying that, spotify is blowing both out of the water right now.

[cardinals_fan]

Using it now. My only complaint is that while the selection is huge, that's really only true for certain genres. I've been listening to tthe same songs for weeks now in Drum & Bass.
My Beethoven channel is pretty good.

[RaZe42]

saying that, spotify is blowing both out of the water right now.
+1