Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Hooked on Pandora

Lately I've become completely hooked on Pandora. If you don't know about it, it's a free streaming music site based on the Music Genome Project. You create your own stations based on "seed" songs or artists. Pandora then uses the genome qualities of that song or artist to feed you other similar songs. You can "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" a song to tweak what it is that Pandora feeds you. You can also bookmark songs, which sends them to your profile page where other people can see what you like and you can link over to Amazon or iTunes to purchase the track.

I use Pandora primarily at work, but I love it so much that I've started using it at home, too, by connecting a laptop to the stereo we use most often - the one in the kitchen (my wife is also hooked). Sonos makes a home music distribution system that will connect to Pandora, but that seems like overkill to me.

Now I'm starting to want Pandora when I'm on the move. Some phones can be used to connect to Pandora, too, but not my BlackBerry Curve. Not even with the web browser. I know I can buy and download my bookmarked songs, but I bookmark songs from multiple stations, not all of which I'm interested in buying at a given time. It would be great if Pandora allowed me organize my bookmarked songs by station, and then buy all (or selected) bookmarked songs from a station in a single action. It should be as easy as possible (see below - I hate managing MP3's).

Really, though, I hate managing MP3's. I want Pandora to work on my phone so I don't have to manage files. It's a completely friction-free way of listening to music if you don't mind not being able to go directly to a particular song (you can skip ahead in the stream, but you don't have direct access to specific tracks). I don't have to manage anything to make it work. I like that.

Pandora, please work on my phone. Until then, I'm patiently waiting. And loving Pandora.

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Composed on my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

We're glad you're loving Pandora, Aaron!
Thanks for the suggestions and comments -- I'll share those with the team.

- Lucia, from Pandora

Anonymous said...

We're (were) loving Pandora here in the UK too. It's just a pity the record companies have decided to block it here. We're Sonos' largest reseller in the UK (simplysonos)and our customers are desperate to get it back! Please keep the pressure on, Pandora!

Aaron Gray said...

Simon,

Sounds like typical shortsighted record label stuff. The sheer force of gravity will pull them to the new business model. They won't have a choice. Here's an interesting piece on Wired on this topic: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all

Thanks for commenting!

Anonymous said...

Simon, we're really hopeful about getting Pandora back in the UK -- we're working on it! The sooner the better, of course.

Aaron, thanks for the link to that interesting article!

- Lucia

Anonymous said...

I too love Pandora, and my Blackberry Curve. Alas, I am so sad that I can't listen to my stations on my phone. Maybe soon??? Until then, Pandora at work and home rocks...
Cindy, Marysville, WA