Online radio tailored especially for you!
Yesterday I stumbled over Pandora, a "music discovery service". Open the page , create a "station" by entering an artist or song title of your choice, let pandora work a short time and listen. It always starts with a song of the band you entered and goes from there. Unlike the social music network Last.fm (formerly known and still powered by audioscrobbler), pandora claims to select songs played by their "music genome":
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.
And this mostly works. Ok, they tend to drift away from time to time, starting with Jets To Brazil once led me to Creed (which can’t be played at all. never!) and some real alternative rock like Pearl Jam or Meat Puppets. When the sound of some 80’s glam-rockers tuned in, I switched channels (ah, pandora.. and I wondered). Anyhow, it mostly generates a somewhat smooth playlist. Guess I have to be more flexible when it comes to generes. And haircuts. Also, it seems The Cardigans are more mainstream than I’m willig to admit. I really like them and find Nina Persson’s voice very comforting, but I can hardly listen to any other "Artist" following. Elitist asshole? ME? No way..
Last.fm gives a slightly more adventurous listening experience. For beeing based on the track submissions of its subscribers, if lot of people have a wide range of music they listen to, you get wide ranged stream. I created a stream for Hot Water Music and got Refused, NOFX, Lagwagon, Cursive and Fugazi. All related to the same genre (punk rock, anyone? ok, Cursive probably not) but hardly the same listening experience.
Another thing is the available streams: Pandora seems to have the bigger collection and plays pretty much everything you throw at it, given they sold at least seven to twelve albums. It created streams for Jets To Brasil or 13 & God, last.fm couldn’t generate a stream for both of them. Both failed for Countdown To Life, though. Guess they only sold 3 CDs and 2 times Vinyl.
A technical sidenote: Pandora uses Flash, last.fm offers precompiled clients for Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, Wintendo and sources for the DIY people.
Anyhow, both services are fun to use and offer hours of enjoyment, well, Pandora only 10 of them for then you have to pay a yearly fee of 36 bucks. Give it a try, it’s worth it. At the moment of writing this, I’m listening to a Pandora-station that I started with Evergreen Terrace, followed by Twentyinchburial, Atreyu.. nice.