Pandora
by Volker Weber
This is one amazing website:
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.
[Thanks, Stephan]
Comments
I agree. Ever since I ran across pandora.com, I recommend it to everyone I know. I live for new music, so it's perfect for me.
WOW!!
Hm, this reminds me very much of the former launch.com which was later acquired by Yahoo! and is now Yahoo! Music. Unfortunately Yahoo! cut out the option to choose whether you want more more music similar to your rated songs or more of your rated artists and albums.
Very neat, indeed, I'm glad this is back. But does anyone know how the legal situation is? In their FAQ it says that right now their only allowed to stream to U.S. residents, which is why they require a U.S. ZIP code in the registration form. Good thing these are easy to come up with ;-).
Have you ever looked at Last FM? I am using it for a while now, and the recommendations become better and better. I discovered some real good music via profiling my "listening behavior" at last fm.
Yahoo Radio (http://launch.yahoo.com/) has the same system.
Its fantastic. I only wish it could accept an uploaded ipod playlist or something like that to get started.
Pandora seems nice, but I get about 2 positives from about 10 artists or songs I look for. This tells me that it is the same mainstream stuff mixed up with a different interface, serving other mainstream artists, and so on... I find it disturbing to find only major label tracks there.
The fact that they want to get paid if you happen to skip songs often is also a big stop sign to me. Either they sell the stuff one listens to via iTMS or Amazon, or they want to get paid for the service. But not both.
Pandora is pretty neat. However, there's one catch for those of us that are non-U.S. citizens; actually, this catch also applies to you if you ARE a U.S. citizen, but currently are not residing in the U.S. of A.: No pandora for you! Reading their EULA makes that pretty clear. I've mailed their customer support a couple of weeks ago - which answered within 20 minutes, whew! - and they explained to me that unfortunately they currently cannot offer their service to European customers but are working on negotiating terms with the labels. Thus far I've not heard back from them; and as of yesterday they EULA still read the same. I'm sticking to last.fm.
looks interesting, wonder if it knows i only like my music at 256Kbps or higher ;O)
blogmusik.net is also worth a look. Not sure how they get away with it but viva la musik.
