I have Martin Stannard to thank for this one. Pandora is a new kind of radio station. You key in a band/artist you like and Pandora will form a ‘station’ that plays songs non-stop by that band/artist and others who have some kind of affinity with that band/artist.
It works (and it's legal. Artists get paid, presumably through the discreet advertising - no horrible pop-ups)! I have five stations now that play music akin to Tom Waits, Talking Heads, Yo La Tengo, Miles Davis, and Belle and Sebastian. Some of the music I had heard before, some was completely new to me, but nearly all of it was good. If you hate a track, you can tell Pandora and they promise never to play it again.
When you go there first, you can have a trial shot. Then it asks you to register (quite minimal information) and to provide a U.S. zipcode. If you don’t know what to do at that point and are ready to give up, does this help?
7 comments:
Interesting link. I think I'll test it on some deleted titles first. I've got a brother in Oakland, so I'll use his zip code. Sneaky or what?
last.fm is the UK-based site that does the same thing. I recommend it highly.
I'll give last.fm a try, Andrew. Thanks.
Just had an email from Pandora saying that they have to stop streaming to the UK for legal reasons. That's a shame; my three 'stations' (Thelonious Monk, John McLaughlin, MJQ) threw up some very interesting tracks by musicians I hadn't heard before.
Colin, give last.fm a try then. Similarly cool things, for sure.
"We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for most listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative."
yes, nice while it lasted...
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