Check out Pandora

At pandora.com you can listen to music that is similar to the music you like. Verrry interesting!

I tried it out, but it had a tendency to repeat the same songs I heard last time when I would start it up again, even after I ranked them, in the same order.

Another potential is last.fm, which while not perfect in what music it has available, it has some good music.

I put in 'Bushes and Briars' and it picked The Carpenters, Fairport Convention, Sandy Dennis, and Frothingay. The last 3 were related since Sandy Dennis was in both groups.

It was interesting because it did list the elements that made up the song I input (chords, use of vocals, etc).

Pandora lets you create your own virtual radio station.

I've been running Pandora and refining a radio station of stuff i can tolerate and even enjoy at times. It does seem to be learning. Radio.com was cool too, but I kind of like Pandora's customization better and the way you can rate the songs with the little thumbs up/thumbs down thing. quick and easy.

If you want, send an email to my username at gmail dot com and I'll share this station with you.

...I had to do SOMETHING about the 80's music they are playing....it's been 2 years....I was getting urges to wear parachute pants to work, and tie bandanas arouns my knees.

I like this site more and more....
and my station keeps improving.....very infrequent that it plays something i actually dislike at this point.

http://broadcaster.pandora.com/t?r=927&c=0&l=37961&ctl=1747F9C:E70C6FCEE7F4054C0F632B1AB0F53015&

I adore Pandora. It's unfortunate that you now have to listen to ads, but I get it. It's a free service so I can't complain.

pah, the ads are infrequent, and short....

http://www.pandora.com/#/stations/play/20911250931304860

love pandora. this is my current quikmix... if I did it correctly

Too bad free accounts will be limited to 40 hours a month. http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/archives/2009/07/important_updat_1.html

Specifically, we are going to begin limiting listening to 40 hours per month on the free version of Pandora. In any given month, a listener who hits this limit can then opt for unlimited listening for the remainder of that month for just $0.99. In essence, we're asking our heaviest users to put a dollar (well, almost a dollar) in the tip jar in any month in which they listen over 40 hours. We hope this is relatively painless and affordable--the same price as a single song download.

worth it, in my opinion....and if you're too cheap....switch to radio dot com for the rest of the month. still, beats the piss out of the alternative for me.

I have the Fire FM extension on Firefox as a menu bar, you can type in an artist and will mix a station based on similar stuff. You can do a lot with favourites on the site too.

I just upgraded my Pandora account. For $36 per year, now I have 192Kbps, it takes five hours to time out, no ads (were the ads all that bad, anyway?). Plus skins, mini-players, etc.

Considering that I listen all day long at work, does $3 a month, basically 10 cents a day, not sound like a good deal to you?

Upgrade. The 192Kbps sound quality is immediately noticable.

i like the idea of having it outside of a browser.

Or you could just, you know, download the music.

Master Cthulhu;583034 wrote:

Or you could just, you know, download the music.

not really the same thing. you'd have to have a shit ton of it, and set up some serious random lists to come near the variety. i've been discovering bands i like. The Black Keys.....never heard of them before...but i dig em.

I guess your right, it's a whole different thing...

Pandora is great for discovering new bands, I agree.

Most of the stuff I listen to isn't on Pandora anyways.

It's more than just a playlist randomizer; it's based on the music genome project:

...an effort founded by Will Glaser, Jon Kraft, and Tim Westergren to "capture the essence of music at the fundamental level" using almost 400 attributes to describe songs and a complex mathematical algorithm to organize them.

Today I am using the browser-independent Pandora application . One (minor) drawback: although you can view your stations, it doesn't highlight the station that the song currently being played is on. I use a quickmix of 11 distinct stations (so that I can cultivate each one and toggle by genre):

[LIST]
[*]2112: I/II/III
[*] Classic Psychedelic
[*] New Age Electronic
[*] Avant Garde/Free Jazz
[*] Drum'n'Bass
[*] Motown Custom
[*] Smooth Jazz
[*] Bebop/Combo Jazz
[*] Rock/Pop Setups
[*] Instrumental Hip Hop
[*] Electronica Custom
[/LIST]

Once again, I have to mention that the 192Kbps sound quality makes a huge difference. The enriched experience is well worth approximately 10 cents a day, as is the expanded five-hour timeout window. I wish I would have done this a long time ago.

Today my co-worker (the other half of a 2-man IT department) built up a thin client to run Pandora on a set of Altec Lansing speakers he brought from his house. Now Pandora runs across the office from both of our desks instead of blasting right out of my PC (and into my con calls). We RDC into the TC to fiddle around with Pandora settings. It's awesome.

we have it on our cell phones. we just decorated our tree, and listened to christmas music on spencers phone.

pretty slick

lumberjim;618181 wrote:

we have it on our cell phones. we just decorated our tree, and listened to christmas music on spencers phone.

pretty slick

I finally got around to this... and I cannot believe the sound quality streaming out of my cell phone.

Pandora, with the upgraded 192Kbps audio, running through my Blackberry, with Sony MDR7506 headphones!

Yeah I dont use my ipod anymore...

I have the same phone. red curve 8330m

lumberjim;639501 wrote:

I have the same phone. red curve 8330m

I just got it today. Well, I just activated it today. My other IT dude upgraded to a new Blackberry and gave me this one.

Today's agenda:

[LIST=1]
[*]Add data plan
[*]Import SIM contacts
[*]Set up work email accounts
[*]Take picture(s) for desktop
[*]Download Pandora, configure
[*]Find my good headphones
[/LIST]

browse to , and get itookthisonmyphone.com

also, I like the browser 'bolt'

and berrybuzz is cool too


www.crackberry.com has lots of info

I'm really a luddite about phones, I think I've mentioned this before. My total goal here was to be able to send/receive emails, but... I looove Pandora.

For people stuck with an iPhone there's this.

Pandora does any of the major smart phones/carriers ... http://www.pandora.com/on-the-go/

Update: found "Blutooth, Enabled/Disabled" under Options. Could it be? Now I'm streaming Pandora to my Plantronics headset!

Sounds like an AM radio station, of course. But I'm thinking, I could stream Pandora while I sit in boring meetings? Are people doing this?!

Update: I'm learning... My device supports stereo bluetooth (A2DP), and they do make stereo bluetooth headphones designed for listening to music. Anybody know what kind of audio quality can you realistically get via bluetooth? I'm realizing I don't know much about how bluetooth even works.

the problem here is that any decent headphones you would usually get to listen to *music* through are not going to be suitable for phone conversations, that is, no microphone.

the closest I came to ones was a set of stereo headphones with the silicone earbud covers. These sealed out the ambient noise enough to make the music listenable, and I could hear the phone conversations fine too. And yes, of course there was a microphone. But the very quality of isolating the outside noise meant that they were not very safe to drive with and it made listening to my own side of the conversation awkward like my head was in a bucket.

If you're not worried about a dual use headset, just go with the best music headphones wired or otherwise you can get your head in.

lumberjim;581917 wrote:

I like this site more and more....
and my station keeps improving.....very infrequent that it plays something i actually dislike at this point.

http://broadcaster.pandora.com/t?r=927&c=0&l=37961&ctl=1747F9C:E70C6FCEE7F4054C0F632B1AB0F53015&

Sorry LJ, but as soon as the link started loading, I was kicking myself, because I thought Rick Astly was going to pop up. Sorry I misjudged you. I've been using Pandora for a few years now. My musical taste is not very ecclectic, so as soon as they put som Redbone wannabe on there, I switch stations.

spudcon;639593 wrote:

...so as soon as they put som Redbone wannabe on there, I switch stations.

Hah! Leon Redbone rules!

"I went down to the river to watch them fish swim by,
I got to the river so lonesome I wanted to die,
So I jumped in the river but the doggone river was dry."

Awesomeness.

Gravdigr;640494 wrote:

Hah! Leon Redbone rules!

Seconded.

One of my favorites:

[YOUTUBE]5RSQ1JSwP24[/YOUTUBE]

Heheh...I couldn't keep my eyes off the forty-five adapter.

I'm not sure if Bruce was suggesting that iPhones don't get Pandora, but that was like the first app I put on mine.

I have switched to lastfm.com . Not only do you get to create a radio station, you can listen to albums you like. As much as you like. Some songs aren't available on all albums, but unlike Pandora there is no limit on the amount you can play. It's coooool. ;) Check it out!

Oh and I have never had to create an account...cool. Did I say cool already? :)

Elspode;640678 wrote:

I'm not sure if Bruce was suggesting that iPhones don't get Pandora, but that was like the first app I put on mine.

Don't have a cell phone, and don't know the first thing about it, just happened to read a recommendation for that iPhone app a couple hours earlier.