Pandora's Custom Streaming Radio: Custom Music for Your Ears

Streaming radio stations have been on the internet as long as I can remember being online. While most offer choices of commercial-free radio stations with various genres of music, Pandora offers custom streaming radio.

The way Pandora works is beautiful in its simplicity. Simply enter an artist or a song choice and Pandora will build a custom streaming radio station with selections similar to your choice. As the song selections play, you can rate them with either a thumbs up or thumbs down. Pandora automatically adjusts your streaming radio play list based on your likes and dislikes.

But don't let Pandora's simplicity fool you. There's heavy duty information technology powering Pandora's custom streaming radio service. Pandora was created by the Music Genome Project. If you thought mapping the human DNA genome was complicated, consider analyzing over 10,000 songs and breaking them down to their fundamental musical attributes such as melody, harmony, rhythm, arrangement, instrumentation, orchestration, lyrics, voice and vocal harmony. OK, maybe the human genome has more to it and certainly the Music Genome Project sounds like a lot more fun. The end result is a vast database of both popular and obscure music matched to your particular taste.

Pandora's custom streaming radio service is both free or by subscription. The free version has on screen advertising while the subscription of course eliminates ads of all kinds. Currently, the free stream plays pure music though plans are underway for adding commercials in between songs. Subscriptions to Pandora cost $36 per year or $3 per month.

Pandora allows you to create up to 100 streaming radio stations so you can play whatever genre strikes your fancy at any given time. For example, I'm listening to my Jack Johnson station right now which features artists such as Jack Johnson, Chris Whitley, Victor Malloy and the Jayhawks. I also have stations that feature rockers similar to the Red Hot Chili Peppers for times when I want something a little heavier. With Pandora's custom streaming radio service I'm discovering new artists that play the music I love.

The "Backstage" feature of Pandora allows users to search their database for information about the music and the artists. For example, I searched Jack Johnson and found a biography as well as a discography. Not only is Jack Johnson a singer/songwriter but he's a professional surfer as well as a filmmaker.

Pandora is easy to share. You can email a station to friends as well as post a Pandora Sidebar on your blog by using RSS feeds.

The sound quality of Pandora's custom streaming radio is excellent coming out of my sound card and powered speakers. They also offer a device called the Squeeze Box that allows you to connect Pandora to your stereo system. The Squeeze Box comes with a remote control and allows you to listen to your computer's music files on your stereo system.

For now, I'm sticking to listening to Pandora's custom streaming radio on my computer. That's where I spend most of my time anyway!