Pandora

Quick post for today. And it will probably be very old news to many of you but I just discovered Pandora Radio. It was recommended to me last year, but it was until yesterday that I finally decided to give it a try. And my first impressions are along the lines of why didn't I try it much sooner. Pandora is great!

Pandora is a music service supported through advertisement. It was described to me as the music equivalent of Tivo, but since I don't own a Tivo I don't know if the description fits. There is a subscription option, but most people stick with the free version. The interface is clean, clearly a web 2.0 service in the tradition of Facebook. Furthermore, in less than five minutes I had already figured out how to use it and it is evident this thing is something special.

There are a few things that still need to be fixed. There is no rewind button and you can't play specific songs. You can only skip six songs every hour if songs don't match your musical style. So in this respect it's more of a recommendation service. If you like a certain artist or a certain song, then next song to be played will have similar characteristics to the songs you have already approved by giving them a "thumbs up."

I can't remember being this excited about a new service like Pandora Radio in a long time. The most impressive thing is that it tries to learn what sounds are pleasant to the user. Every track comes with a description of why its being played. Who knew music had so much structure.