Personalized Radio: Where You're the DJ…. And it's Free!

Wouldn’t you love to create your own radio station where you choose the music for a change?  Ipods are perfect for this but sometimes it’s nice to have a little variety and a surprise as to what song is coming next.  Pandora Internet Radio might be just what you’re looking for.  Pandora Radio is the largest online music website with nearly 30,000 registered subscribers and a database of over 600,000 songs.  1

Although Pandora has a huge song database, it’s not just about serving up songs you want to listen to.  Pandora is created around the idea of categorizing songs.  Songs are categorized not by their genre, but  by over 400 different musical attributes, which are combined together to create larger categories called focus traits.  Pandora has over 2,000 of these focus traits; examples of which include syncopation, key tonality, vocal harmonies, and instrumental proficiency.  When you choose a song or artist, Pandora will then match up other songs which have similar focus traits to create an individualized radio listening experience for you.

The Beauty of Pandora

Pandora allows you to create your own radio stations.  Pandora radio stations are a stream of personalized music  based on one or more artists or song  titles.  To begin, first register with Pandora.  Registration is free.  

Radio stations are easy to create – just click on the button called “Create a New Station.”  Then enter a song or artist.  Based on what you input, an entire radio station will be created around it.  Drawing from the 2,000 focus traits database, Pandora will develop a playlist for you which will include other songs from the same artist and songs from other artists that are similar.  Furthermore, your radio station will always be easily available to you every time you log on to Pandora.  It won’t take long before you find yourself creating numerous radio stations.  Pandora will allow you to create up to 100 stations.   I’ve created many stations around my favorite artists from today, the 80’s, and 70’s.  Dependent upon your mood, your personalized radio is ready to go at a “click’s” notice.

 Customize Your Station

Your radio station is completely unique – you can rate each song with a “Thumbs up” or “Thumbs down.”  If you rate the song a “Thumbs up”, the following songs will have traits similar to this song and all “Thumbs up” songs will play more frequently.    A “Thumbs down” means you do not want to hear that song again and the song will immediately stop, be deleted from playing in the future, and a new song will play.  Another option is to click on the Menu button (between the “Thumbs up” and “Thumbs down” buttons) and click on “I’m tired of this song.”  The song will be retired from all your stations for one month.  To skip a song for the present listening period, click on the skip button, right next to the play/pause button.  Doing so will not judge whether you like the song or not.

 Running out of ideas for radio stations?  No problem.  Pandora also allows you to choose music based on genre:

Choosing a genre allows you to get a great variety of music from a many artists that you might not run across from your personalized radio stations.  And the genres are pretty well defined.   For example, I selected Rock and was given the following sub genres below.  

For Holiday genre, there are over 10 categories for Christmas songs.  Christmas in October – it’s never too early to blast Christmas songs, is it? 

About This Music

There’s more to Pandora besides the tunes.  If you click on “About This Music,” you’ll see more options to learn more about the artist you are listening to. 

• Click on Artist to learn more about the artist. 
• Clicking on Album is a really cool feature – it will show you the names of all the songs on the album along with a demo of each song.  
• Clicking on Song will give you a description of the attributes Pandora chose for this song.  You can also purchase the song here if you’d like. 
• The Lyrics tab will take you to the lyrics to the song playing – so now you can sing along.  However, if you’re in the office, you might want to wait until you get home. 
• Lastly, the Fans tab will show you other fans who like the song you’re listening to.  You can actually connect with them and leave them a message.  Fans unite!

On the Go?

 Good news!  If you have a web enabled phone, you can take Pandora with you.  Listen to it in your car, in the office, while working out or walking, waiting in the dentist office (with headphones of course), etc.    Go to http://www.pandora.com/on-the-go/  to learn more.

 My Squeeze on Pandora

Pandora is not the holy grail.  But it povides an interesting path to enjoy your favorite music.  Here are some of the pro’s and con’s I found regarding Pandora…..

Pros:

• you receive personalized song service because you can “Thumbs up” or” Thumbs down” what you don’t like.
• you discover new songs or even old songs you hadn’t thought about in years.
• you can learn more about your favorite artists in songs by revewing the Artist, Album, Song, and Lyrics section under About This Music.  I am surprised at how they lyrics actually say in some of my old favorites.
• by creating many different radio stations, dependendent upon your mood, you can jump right into the right mood music right away
• if you don’t  know the artist name but you know the song, Pandora will likely find the artist for you.

Cons:

• you can’t hear a song you’re dying to hear right away.   Pandora’s music licenses actually don’t allow them to play  a particular song  on demand.  In fact, within a three hour period, you won’t hear more than 4 songs from a particular artist.
• you can’t rewind or replay any song again.
• you can receive 40 hours of Pandora music for free but then the music simply stops unless you upgrade your subscription ($36/yr).  If you really want to hear more music for the rest of the month without  subscripion, you can pay $.99 for unlimited music the rest of tht month.  You will receive 40 more hours once the new month turns.
• Reception can somtimes be bad on your mobile phone depending on your location.

Overall, I love Pandora!  It’s better than a CD – you have more variety.  It’s better than the radio or Internet radio because I can give immediate feedback as to whether or not I like the song.  If I don’t like it, I “Thumbs down” it and it’s gone.  It’s better than an Ipod because I get variety and suspense as to what is going to play next.  Pandora “gets” me.   And hey, it’s free!  So go check it out for yourself and enjoy!  Rock on!  http://pandora.com.

1  http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Pandora-Media-1013485.html>