Yay! Pandora! Derived from the Greek myth – that a woman named Pandora carried with her a box containing all the evils of mankind – comes a box at Pandora.com which contains all the music made by mankind. Basically, you enter a song or band you like, and Pandora fetches and plays music that sounds similar to that artist. Yes, iTunes does that too, but they aren’t always as accurate, and they only carry more popular music. Pandora is very specific.
I searched for “Five Minutes to Midnight” by Boys Like Girls (this is just an example) and it created my own personal station serving music that sounds just like that song.
Apparently they try not to play the exact song, because in order to serve up free music (legally, achem…SeeqPod) their lawyers won’t let everyone listen to a specific song on demand. These are just security measures so someone/something trying to record the song won’t get a freebie…basically. You can rate the song good or bad and move on to the next song on your station. As you rate more songs, your station starts aquiring the exact taste you’re looking for.
The bad part: you can only skip so many songs per hour when track surfing, (again, legal issues) which makes it hard to attune a station to your tastes quickly, but you can make another station and skip tracks over there, until you hit the limit.
Awesome Tip: Make a station for each of the basic genres you like, then have one dedicated party-music station. Since there are no commercials and Pandora.com is free, you can have your own supply of never-ending party music.
