Imagine you are taking a computer based aptitude test like GRE. If you answer the first question right, the next question is more likely to be tougher. If you get that right too, then the next question may be even tougher. However if you answered it wrong, the computer will very likely ask you a slightly easier question. By the fifth or sixth question the computer has a good idea of your aptitude, and the remaining questions are there to more or less finalize your score.
If only, instead of that monstrosity called GRE, would you love it if your music player played the same Q & A with you to measure your music tastes? Welcome to Pandora.
What is Pandora? It can be best described by the people behind Pandora, from their homepage:
Ever since we started the Music Genome Project, our friends would ask:
Can you help me discover more music that I’ll like?
Those questions often evolved into great conversations. Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs.
We created Pandora so that we can have that same kind of conversation with you.
Using Pandora is simple. Visit their website (http://www.pandora.com) and wait for their flash player to load. Everything else is explanatory. And if you don’t figure out how to use their player, then you have to admit that you are really technically challenged, and need to get off internet. I mean it – it is that simple to create play lists on Pandora. Just wait for their player to load and follow the instructions.
For an indie music freak like me, Pandora is nothing short of a blessing. I used to spend a major part of my day listening to indie artists on Yahoo Launhcast, and end up hating more bands than I like. Now, Pandora has helped me discover bands that I am more likely to love and keep the irritating ones out, just by my learning my musical preferences, and save my time by not making me hear songs that I would have more likely hated anyways.
Some of their other features also include sharing the radio station that you created; you can also search for other’s stations on their network as well, though none of those features have impressed me. What has impressed me though is the way I can rate songs and reject the songs I don’t like.
For example, based on my musical song, Pandora can play a song that it thinks I may like. I can chose to give the song “Thumbs up†or “Thumbs down†– if you “Thumbs down†a song for 2 times, rest assured that song is never played on the radio station. And similarly, songs rated “Thumbs Up†are more likelier to play on your radio station; you can also create your list of favorite songs by adding the songs that you hear to your list – I cannot iterate what a boon the favorites list has been to me – usually I end up adding a song to my favorite lists, and then using my favorite lists, I then hunt down the songs to download.
The other recent features that they added include RSS feeds for your own play-lists; Using their RSS feed you could create a list of songs you are currently hearing on your blog – already there are plug-ins available for blogger and wordpress; I am sure more will follow very soon. They recently teamed up with squeeze box too offers Pandora on a network radio; I am not sure if that thing will take off as expected.
One may argue that their effort is very similar to last.fm – which is quite true; but the fact that I don’t have to install yet another player and that they have much better learning music engine has drawn me more towards Pandora than any other player.
However saying that, there are some quirks with using Pandora, that one may not find exciting – for one, you can never rewind your play list; their music license does not allow you to rewind to a song that you loved – you can skip songs (thank god!), but for a limited number. As of yet, Pandora does not have any ads on their music, which is a boon in itself. Their service is probably not available outside of United States, which could be a downer; however they will start service very soon. And the biggest complain of them all – Pandora will never play the exact song you created the station with – their license doesn’t allow them to do that either.
In spite of those misgivings, I still think that Pandora is probably the best music player out there right now on the internet. The founders of the site are also musicians, who help them classify songs properly; their founders also maintain a blog on their site, and also tour around the country meeting music fans and listeners – a nice move to connect to your audience and also understand what they are looking for. I hope to attend one in D.C whenever they are next and chat up with them.
To sum it up succinctly – Pandora succeeds where all other online music players fail: Delivering music that you will love. Go give it a try!
*PSST: If you want to know what kind of songs I am listening to these days, click on the “Fun Tags” Link in top navigation 🙂