I have found the most fantastic music site! OK, to give credit where credit is due, my Sweetie has been raving about Pandora.com for quite a while. He tried it out and loved it. He’s been telling me to check it out. Today, I had time to do so. And I am also incredibly impressed! I may never watch TV again, I’m having so much fun listening to new music, and old favorites, on Pandora.
Ladies and gents, if you are interested in creating your own radio station, tailored to your specific musical favorites and flavors, check it out!
For those of you Yahoo users, the radio stations on Pandora are similar to the LaunchCast stations we can create on our Yahoo pages. However, Yahoo plays new artists based solely on music genre. I’ve been listening to my own LaunchCast station off and on since I started blogging. I still can’t explain to anyone how Jessica Simpson is similar to anything I like to listen to, but she still managed to pop up on my station. And Yahoo annoyingly pops in their stupid “Yahoo Recommends” songs all the time. Those songs have nothing to do with my preferences and reviews – they just pop in. In months and months, I’ve heard maybe TWO, just two, “Yahoo Recommends” songs that I don’t HATE. They are really annoying. So, when Sweetie mentioned Pandora, I was ready to try something new.
Pandora is based off the “Music Genome Project.” Here is what the creators say about the Project:
Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.
So, they play songs on your station based on the characteristics of the artists you choose. Want to hear a bunch of music that sounds like Depeche Mode, or Nine Inch Nails, or Sarah McLachlan? Then you can choose one artist and create a station around just that artist. You can add artists and/or songs to influence your station. You can bookmark songs and artists you like into your own list. And you can listen to other stations that play the same artists. I’ve already spent time listening to a complete stranger’s station, and I enjoyed every song I heard. What fun!
I love a variety of music, so I’ve gone a little crazy on my station and am picking out a variety of artists. Pandora seems to play about three songs in a row similar to one artist…..then it moves on to another artist…….it’s not as completely random as my own 51-CD cd-changer, but it’s pretty darn good in offering a variety of music. And, I’ve already picked out three or four new artists that I want to listen to more. New music is sweet mana for my soul!!
Anyway, if you want to play around with some music and perhaps discover new artists, check out Pandora. If you want to take a listen to my new station, try and look for it HERE. (or you should be able to search for “Stone Girl’s Tunes” under station names.) Enjoy!!
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