Thursday, September 18, 2008

Pandora.com


Greed, vanity, slander, envy and pining are all evils of mankind brought out by “Pandora’s Box”, with only hope remaining.  Now you think by going to Pandora.com, you think you would be greeted by some sort of twisted evil prepared to devour your very essence. This is not the case. Instead, Pandora.com is a music recommendation and Internet radio website, ready to appeal to any music lovers ears.

In a more detailed explanation, Pandora.com was created by the Music Genome Project. This project, created by a group of avid musicians and music lovers, embarked on a quest to “capture the essence of music”. In short, they created a complex mathematical algorithm, organizing music by their “genes” (think genetics, where this term is used from) or the characteristic of how they sound. Pandora.com uses a program to sort out what kind of music you want to listen to and it creates your very own playlist: playing only songs you like (hopefully!)

The best thing about Pandora.com in my own opinion is that it is free, easy and very simple to use. When you open Pandora.com for the first time, the site allows you start creating your very own playlist right away. You can start by putting in a band name, genre of music or just the title of the song and Pandora does the rest. For example, I put in “Foo Fighters”, Pandora.com explains to me what kind of “genes” the Foo Fighters have and then starts to create a playlist of what other songs I may like from other artists and the original artists/song you typed in.

The first song to appear is “Dani California” by The Red Hot Chili Peppers.

“Oh I love this song” I tell myself

Pandora.com gives you options on what you want to do with the song now. You can either click on the tab below the CD cover that shows a thumbs-up that means “I like this song, save it to my playlist” or a thumbs-down meaning “Never play this song again or ill rip my ears out”. You can, like a media player, pause, skip and adjust volume. The playlist will continue on as much as you like, always mixing up the songs!

Now be warned, you can only skip up to 6 songs per hour (to prevent pirating of music) and cannot rewind/back track to a song you either skipped or just played. This is why the site is free and is considered an “Internet radio” website.

You CAN subscribe to Pandora, paying a 36$ annual fee, but the benefits don’t really appeal to me in the since that the features stay the same unless you have a Sprint phone. You can look for yourself if you want to know more.

Other features include: Music blogs, user comments on artists/songs, create multiple play lists, buy songs and customize your profile!.

Analysis

The site is simply amazing.

What can be better than a site that plays music that I like?  Quick and easy to use.

The site also expanded my music experience. I have been introduced to new bands, old bands and even more amazing songs by artists I already like. This site can help people really expand their own play lists and appreciate other genres of music they never thought they would listen to!

Also, this saves me the agony of crappy, large corporate bought radio stations that play the same crap over and over.

2 comments:

Tony said...

Jess my man, I've heard about this website from you and a few other companions and heard nothing but good things. I see your what your saying about better than large coporations playing the same crap over and over, which arises an interesting point because obviously the step-up from basic radio is XM satelite but even that has a flaw and no its not The All Metalica station cause definetly on there best new stations. Anyways as I was saying even satelite radio doesnt give people options like that and only has a few stations that open ears to new bands and songs. So this phenomenon that is Pandora allows all of that, giving a mix of what you already and twist in what you might love. The only thing I suggest for people is skip wisely haha, Good Blog Jesse

Matt B said...

I have also started using Pandora radio recently and really enjoy it. I find that the more I use it, the better the stations get. I like the "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" votes that you can give to each song and how it uses those criteria to play more music that you like. I have about 7 different stations that I listen to and every once in a while use the "quick mix" feature to blend them all together. Pandora is also a great option for listening to music at work if your job allows it.