Saturday Rewind – Reopening Pandora’s Box of Goodies

I’m always hunting for new music for my I-Pod, since I only have about 3,600 songs on it (and a capacity of 5,000). As I travel a lot, my favorite use of this device is to put it on random, plug in my FM transmitter (I-Trip), and “be jammin” to tunes during my long drives. Back in January I discovered a web site that has since provided me with many downloads, and here was my post on it:

January 4, 2006
A Pandora’s box of Great Music
The other night as I was doing my usual reading via my RSS feed provider (I use WebGator, you should check it out, it’s like having an “Internet assistant”) I came across an article about a new music service called “Pandora“. It is the best way to find new music that I’ve ever come across. The founder Tim Westergren has created this huge database of artists and albums that work like an algorithm when you input the name of an artist or song that you like. It starts playing music that “fits” with the style and format of the artist you picked, and gives you the opportunity to buy the song on the spot, or log them onto a list for later buying. It really does give you some excellent suggestions. What’s more, it’s free (as long as you allow some advertisements). Happy listening!

What I’ve since discovered is that this “algorithm” is actually several dozen people who listen to tens of thousands of CD’s and tracks, and categorize them. Now talk about a great job – getting paid to listen to music all day! There’s a great article in tomorrow’s NY Times that describes this process in more detail, and talks about the trend of “personalizing” music. I’ll link to it in the Sunday Papers tomorrow when it goes online (quick aside – isn’t it strange that one can read part of the Sunday papers on a Saturday??).

So 8 months on, I’d still highly recommend Pandora if you are looking for new tunes. I’d also quickly mention a couple of other out-of-the-way places if you are into “adult alternative” music – WFUV online, based in NY (it’s on my car radio constantly when I’m home), and the “Bakers Dozen” most requested songs on the Sirius radio channel “The Spectrum” (occasionally I get satellite radio on my rental cars and this is the best channel I’ve found).

Once again, happy listening (and any song suggestions of yours would also be welcome)!

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