Pandora Internet Radio

Pandora radio is the next best thing to downloading your own music.  It is an online website that allows you to play music on your web browser.  They also provide smartphone and device applications for just about anything you can think of (iphone, blackberry, android, iPad, etc.) 

OK so what's so special about that? 

You can create your own playlist so the options of developing your own channel of music are infinite.  Pandora online radio is what I imagined aol music and yahoo music were supposed to be.  Pandora radio has a unique algorithm called the "Human Genome Project".  What the human genome project does, is it records all of the listening habits of you and everyone else on Pandora radio.  Using all of these analytics and comparisons, the computer determines what type of songs and music you will like.  The user can vote with a thumbs up or thumbs down to tell the computer system whether it chose a song you liked or didn't like.  With every successive choice, the computer learns a little more about your music listening habits.  It's sort of like the supercomputer Deep Blue that defeated a famous chess player in that it learns from it's mistakes and makes better choices for your next songs.  I've built several channels based on certain genres of music that I like and I listen to Pandora Radio all day at work.

You are allowed 40 hours a month of free listening. That's pretty awesome considering just like listening to songs on the radio, they have to pay royalties to the artists each time their song is played. So let me reiterate that it's FREE for 40 hours of listening a month. If you want to listen to music for more than 40 hours a month it's only $0.99. Compare unlimited listening to all of your favorite songs for less than a dollar a month to downloading one of your favorite songs on iTunes. Also, Pandora Radio has all of the latest songs that are playing on the radio. You can pick premade channels or pick a channel that your friend listens to. The possibilities are endless with Pandora Radio. The best part is that you can take the music on the road with your smartphone and play the music in your car. That's like having satellite radio for $0.99 a month. However there are a couple key drawbacks to listening to Pandora Radio.

The drawbacks to listening to Pandora Radio are the inability to pick the exact song you want to listen to and when you get to listen to it. The computer will play your songs that you've chosen but it may take several hours for the same song to come up again. This really depends on how you choose your list of music (thumbs up and thumbs down voting). Also, Pandora radio has advertisements every 5 or so songs. The advertisements really aren't that bad and they are usually something that would interest you anyways (considering they are pulling your demographics from your profile along with your listening stats to show you ads relevant to you). However, you can pay more money each month to remove the advertisements for pure listening pleasure. I've been to several bars that have gotten rid of their commercial music provider and installed a small computer running Pandora Radio. I've even seen them run their music system from an iPhone!

The list of smartphones you can use with Pandora

According to a press release dated January 12, 2011, Pandora now has 75 million listeners.  So what are you waiting for already.  Go check it out.  Pandora online radio.