Well since I
got a new phone (and I’ll be blogging on that someday soon here) I have been
obsessed with Pandora Radio. Once I
started it on my phone, I found out you can also listen to it on the Internet
too.
I had heard
of Pandora before but I had never really tried it. I knew it was a radio site but never really
knew how awesome it was.
Basically
you can go to http://www.pandora.com and
sign up for a free account. Once you are
signed up, you just type in an artist or a song name and it will play music similar
to that song or artist.
I typed in
the Oak Ridge Boys and it started playing music by the Oak Ridge Boys, the Statler Brothers, Randy Travis, etc. Once you get that all figured out, you can
crank it up and the quality is surprisingly clear. I started hearing songs that I haven’t ever
heard, or haven’t heard in a very long time. It’s a great way to discover new music.
They pay for
it through advertising, but the advertisements are anything but intrusive. They have about 1% of the advertisements that
we hear on the radio every day. Hope
Depot, NetFlix are the only advertisements that I
have really heard so far.
But the
coolness doesn’t stop there. Since it plays
random songs, there are obviously going to be songs that it plays that you
really don’t want to hear. That’s where
the thumbs up or down comes in, because if you don’t like the song just give it
a thumbs down and it will never play on that station again. If you do like the song then just click the
thumbs up and it will play that song more often and more songs like it. Once the song gets old, just tell Pandora your tired of it and it will not play that song again for
one month.
If you’re
like most of us you enjoy different types of music. In that case, just setup a separate station. Every song or artist you type in creates a
new virtual station. You can have lots
of different stations that play all kinds of different music depending on your
mood and what you want to listen too at the moment.
When you
click the thumbs down button it will stop playing that song and play the
next. You can also click the next button
to not thumb down the song but just not play it then and move on to the
next. The contract with the record
industry keeps you from being able to skip to many songs per hour, so once you
use up your skips you are stuck listening. You can always quit listening for that period of time though.
You can
upgrade your account and get the Pandora desktop application, unlimited
listening, no ads, higher quality audio, and it will
allow you to skip songs more often.
The best part is you can listen for free, and that is what makes it the coolest thing ever. I should also mention I have nothing to do with Pandora Radio, I am just a happy customer.
Posted March 12, 2010 by Eric, FMD Network Owner.
