Pandora

Pandora is my SOULMATE!
*when i’m sad, it plays depressing emo and lets me cry.
**when i feel like i can’t run that last mile at the gym, it finds the most amazing & energizing music that keeps me running for 3 more!
***when i’m with my parents, it plays music that puts them back into the days when they were newly weds.
****and when the girls and i are getting ready for a GNO, it finds obnoxious house/​hiphop/​pop that we can sing along to at the top of our lungs and we turn it UUUP!
Living w/​o pandora is like living without air. I don’t mind the ads and the skipping limitations, because the pros absolutely outweigh the cons. Pandora finds new beats by fresh artists and mixes them with classic songs that leave me wanting MORE. And I love how I can install it on my Blackberry so I’m never lonely.

I love this song! Ohhhhhhh, I love this song too!
Pandora is so intuitive. (It is a little creepy at times.) With the free version, you have limited «skips» available but I rarely feel the need to use them anyway.
Could it get any better? Yes. Netflix instant now streams Pandora. Nice.

Great source of background music. The commercials really break the flow but fortunately they’re not too frequent. The only thing I can’t stand is the need to click on Pandora to make sure you’re still listening.

WOW!!!
Pandora is on Unilocal!!!
Pandora is sick with it!!!
Just play your theme of music and rock out!!!
(nuff with the yelling)
its also free!!!
oops…
i can’t rave enough about Pandora…
Yell it out!!!

As I’m writing this review I’m listening to «Guilty» by The BeeGees on Donna Summer Radio thanks to the power of Pandora!
I’ve created a station for all my moods; Lounge Lizard, Yeehaw!, Big Hair, Beats, etc… You get the idea.
I started a new job recently and the first time I popped on my headphones I eventually heard giggling because I was jammin’ out. They understand now — we’re a Pandora office!
You can listen along to my stations (and share yours with me) at:

«Music soothes the savage beast… Rwarr!»
One of the many contributing factors to offset my road rage is listening to good music. But when I’m in the car, the thing I hate the most is shuffling through my car’s stereo turner searching for good mix of music.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I can handle when local stations play commercials between segments… But when they continue to shovel the same 5 songs over and over… That’s it! Enough is enough. Now, is the time for change.
I considered satellite radio since my car offers it as an option but I don’t want to deal with the hassle and, most importantly, bear another unnecessary expense of paying for new equipment and subscribing to a monthly service.
Solution: By pure coincidence, I came across this APP for my iPod… And have fallen in love with it ever since.
What is Pandora?
Pandora is an automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project. Users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. Users provide feedback on approval or disapproval of individual songs, which Pandora takes into account for future selections. [
Pandora Internet Radio has changed the way I listen to music entirely. I’m simply amazed with the wide selection of music genres & artists I never would’ve know through local radio.
But the only downfall, is my interest in downloading the MUSIC VIDEO version (via Apple’s iTunes) has skyrocketed in recent weeks… But so worth it!
Thank you, Pandora Radio! You’ve made me a happy commuter and reduced future outbursts/​triads… Now, if only I could buckle down and improve my time management, I’d be a better commuter… But I’ll write about that at another time =)

This has a wonderful concept with so-​so execution.
But over the years, it has improved and made my work day better as I had a continous stream of Van Halen, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, AC/​DC, and Bön Jovi coming through my speakers.
Sure, Pandora would slip up and slip in some crappy Poison, Whitesnake, and other various crappy hair metal bands since Pandora incorrectly classifies Van Halen, AC/​DC, and Def Leppard as «hair metal» when they are more «hard rock» than anything. And clearly, Bön Jovi is totally pop music. Duh.
Music category semantics aside, I appreciate the effort Pandora. And at least, I get some «skips» to play with when the crap does come up on my playlist.
In the end, Pandora is making everyone’s work day that much better. Unless, you are sucking up to much bandwith and your company decides to block the site.
Of course, this leads to disgrunted workers going postal and stuff.
But whatever. You can’t blame Pandora for that.
Blame it on the recession. Or blame it on the ah-​ah-​ah-​ah-​al-​co-​hol.
Yeah, Pandora sneaks in some crappy hip-​hop here and there too.
All because one day I wanted to listen to Vanilla Ice and Sir Mix-​A-​Lot.

Pandora. I love you. I luft you. I luurve you.
When I’m feeling the blues –like only a woman can– you are so there for me. Billie Holiday radio, please. Nina Simone? But of course.
When I can’t take one more second of the mind-​numbing office cubicle ghetto –you save me. Death Cab for Cutie? Radiohead. Ok! Thievery Corp. I’m with you. Stevie? Wonder? Lovely. (You like Coldplay a lot, don’t you? No worries.)
Jazz high coming on: Roy Haynes? Where are you? Coltrane, honey? Wynton? Brandon? Terrance? Come on out, boys. Chris Potter Underground? Wicked gooood! Who knew? Oh– you did!
I’m feeling Afro Mystic and SuperStylin’ — you got me covered.
You help me find so many new artists and songs I didn’t know made my toes wiggle in delight. And I love that I can click on most songs now and read the lyrics. Amel Lerrieux — holy crap! You can write, girl!
The apps for the Blackberry or iPhone are great and allow you to take your music cravings with you. The site also has info on how you can pump your Pandora stations throughout your home. They are playing more ads these days– but, hey, they gotta make a living.
What was that? Wild women don’t get the blues? Really? You have a station for that? Get OUT! I love you!

Usually I listen to trance music at work on Pandora (the day goes by so much faster & it’s great workout music). I know trance gets a bad reputation — I used to hate it. But I’ve grown up and now Britney Spears ain’t nothing to me. My favorite stations (and some of Jason C.‘s recommendations — so you know this will be good) are Tiesto, Infected Mushroom, Ferry Corsten, Paul Van Dyk, Astral Projection, Juno Reactor — are some of the best hard trance/​trance/​psytrance producers and DJs in the world.
So, today something went totally wrong. Pandora was playing this weird weird music — when I was on the Infected Mushroom (psytrance) station. I thought Pandora was going through some technical difficulties or something.
It turns out I was listening to two different stations — one station was set to Mozart and the other one was set to… Infected Mushroom?! I had one opened on Internet Explorer and the other one on Mozilla. Major oops.
I am a Pandora, mash-​up DJ. I’m available for bookings. Contact my agent — I still have open spots after February 2011.

Pandora is pretty much my life.
Whenever I am doing work on my computer, Pandora is there.
Whether I’m writing a paper, doing research, or buying plane tickets, Pandora is there.
My favorite thing about you, Pandora, is that you are tailored to my exact mood. Say I feel like listening to music that sounds like Sublime. Poof– a radio station is created. Say I just discovered a new song I love and want more of it — Poof– a radio station is created. Say I want something mellow — Poof– a radio station is created.
Thank you for being there for me Pandora, and always making me happy.
The possibilities with Pandora are endless…

*** my fave radio station (s) are on iPhone? ***
Pandora is the best application on iPhone by far.
i must listen to Pandora Radio at least 2hrs per day.
it’s a great concept … you make your own radio station.
i agree w/​Martin W, «the Music Genome Project is genuis».
if i wanna upbeat club vibe, i type in «Louie Vega» for tunes.
if i’m mellowing out on the patio, i do «Nancy Wilson» radio.
i can dial in any kinda vibe i want … and more importantly
i can access it by iPhone anytime and/​or anywhere i go:
LA, CHI, NYC, gym, car, bed, bath, pool … it’s all good.
no iPhone? no problem. go to

to use Pandora on your PC instead. really, genius stuff!
*** FM is in trouble … Pandora is commercial free too. ***

What can be better than to get answers to questions you didn’t know how to ask and to be taken places you didn’t know you wanted to travel to?
Pandora Radio does just that. Best Internet Radio and one of the best iPhone apps. You tell it a song or an album you like and it creates a station for you, based on specific characteristics of your choice. The streaming is perfect; you never have to wait for a song to load. As you listen, you can see the artist information, the album information, and an explanation as to why they chose this particular artist or song for your «station».
I’ve only been using it for a couple of days and already discovered artists and bands I never heard of that fit so well with my tastes. You can even see other people’s stations and listen to those. You can have as many stations as you want or have Pandora Radio play you a mix of all your stations.
If you like a song — you give it thumbs up and the station will play it for you in the future; if you give it thumbs down, the song stops and you immediately get a new one. You can even shelve a song for one month.
If you want to widen your musical horizons, look no further.
This is one Pandora’s Box that’s safe to open.

This is the latest EVIL tool I’ve discovered. Yeah, it’s online, and yes it’s a «radio station». That in and of itself isn’t innovative. What’s really cool here is how YOU can make your own station! You enter a song or artist, and then Pandora pours on the magic. Pandora takes your choice, and makes a playlist of similar music. So you might here stuff you’ve already heard and like, but what’s cool (and evil) is that you will get to listen to some new stuff that you will probably like as well.
So yeah, in these days of economic uncertainty, I know I’m probably going to throw down some coin on new music when I should be putting my hard-​earned Benjamins inside my mattress. Oh well, when I’m huddled on the streets, atleast I’ll have some cool tunes to jam to – courtesy of Pandora! ;)

I’m sort of a music junkie — I’ve been serious about music since the mid-70’s — have the cd towers, the shelf full of vinyls, a couple special shoe-​boxes with the really good stuff, and a fairly large assortment on digital. I wouldn’t call myself an audiophile but I know what I like about music, and I listen several hours a day, and I miss it when I don’t have it.
I fooled around on
for a year or two until I bought my wife a Grace WiFi radio. Since I could now have Pandora in the kitchen I took some time and created nine stations spanning the music I like the most — and then started playing them as a quickmix over the radio. The radio allows feedback and skipping, so I continued to tune the stations. Within a few months I gave up my collection of 5,000+ songs (hey — I bought over half of them!) on my PCs at work and home and started just listening to Pandora.
Pandora plays music that I love and then comes up with fantastic stuff that I’ve never heard before. I add the new songs I really like back into the stations and edit out the stuff I don’t, and Pandora magically plays the *best* music selection I could ever dream of. Not only that, but now I think about music differently and understand what I do and don’t like better — Pandora has simultaneously helped both expand my music tastes and focus them.
It’s like having my very own private music consultant helping me to explore and discover hundreds of new songs and artists, plus also playing back all my favorites mixed in. Pandora is very good at not beating music to death like normal radio — if it does play a song too much you can just *skip* it or select *don’t play for a month*. If something is really great you can bookmark the artist or the song for reference or later purchase.
The $ 36 a year donation is nothing for what I get out of it. For five years I used Yahoo Music and Radio Blog, but Pandora goes way beyond what I was getting from either of them. BTW — if you like alternative rock, blues guitar based rock, sonic pop, electronic club music, and some punk edge give my QuickMix @
a listen.

«There’s no combination of words
I could put on the back of a postcard
No song I could sing
But I can try for your heart
Our dreams, and they are made out of real things
Like a, shoebox of photographs
With sepia tone loving»
Ok, I know that there are already reviews for Pandora as a whole. However, I’d like to spend some time illustrating my love for the Pandora Jack Johnson Station. Seriously, love it.
Imagine you’re having the most wonderfully, relaxing Sunday. You wake up to fresh brewed Kona Coffee and leisurely peruse the newspaper for the weekly store ads and the Sunday funnies. Your loving BF hands you a fresh baked croissant, while your puppy sleeps on your lap. With no plans for the day, you spend a few hours lounging on the couch, flipping between some football games and the Food Network. You then decide to spend the rest of the afternoon at Capitola Beach – relaxing in the sand and watching the rip tides pull the waves in and out. Your perfect day is topped with a delicious dinner in the comfort of your own home with a few glasses of Cote du Rhone. Nothing could make this day any better, until you realize that tomorrow is a work holiday. Awesome.
The Pandora Jack Johnson Station is like the soundtrack to that perfect Sunday. Melodic and relaxing tunes from Jack, Ben Harper, Dave Matthews, Bob Marley, Israel Kamakawiwo’olé, Donavon Frankenreiter, and the list goes on. I almost always have it on (even via my iPhone, plugged into my car!).
Add it, add it, add it to your Pandora Stations.

.
Aural foreplay.
_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​
*the playlist…
Jaguar Wright
musiqsoulchild
JazzyFatNastees
Les Nubians
D’Angelo
Sade
Raphael Saadiq
Floetry
Leela James
Maxwell
Jill Scott
Anthony Hamilton
…

My favorite thing about Pandora is that it provides a variety of music (and subsequent artists) that I normally wouldn’t listen to.
It also pretty interesting that it uses the Music Genome Project:
Interesting because I want to see how close it comes to picking music I might like. Although it occasionally plays random songs for seemingly for no reason.
Anyway, now I have a myriad of selections to help me power through work.
Speaking of work, I recently got an email about not streaming music because it reduces bandwidth or something.
Seriously? Am I solely responsible for slowing down people’s ability to play Worlds of Warcraft or watch movies on Netflix?
I’m sorry. The email said not to listen to Pandora while playing Worlds of Warcraft.
Okay, now that seems fair.

I have to give it up for the Pandora folks for mastering the algorithm (at least more than Unilocal did.)
Remember those days of writing a review for your local liquor store and Unilocal saying, «You May Also Like The French Laundry?» Hilarity!
I put in Al Green in Pandora, and out pops a motley medley of soul sensations to sultry up my work/​study time.
Brilliant!

Aural narcotics.
Pandora has made my life on my laptop so siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick. I’ve learned about so many new bands that it’s crazy!
You gotta go to this website and set this thing up! Here are the stations that I’ve created that I can’t get enough of:
Strange Fruit (artist name)
Tortured Soul (artist name)
Black Uhuru (artist name)
Don’t half step. You will be fulfilled musically and achieve eternal peace if you go to this site.

I love you.
My day wouldn’t be the same without you.
My musical range has grown exponentially and I listen to Pandora more than my own Itunes now.
You rock!
Advice: it only works if you thumbs up /​thumbs down things. That’s how the computer learns what you like or dislike.