Pandora Provides Personalized Radio

Pandora.com, a unique online radio site, enables you to listen to music online for free, but instead of choosing the music for you as with conventional radio stations, it creates a personalized station based on your selections.

What Is Pandora?
Pandora is an off-shoot of the Music Genome Project, which was started in 2000 when founder Tim Westergren and a group of musicians and technology professionals came together to identify a set of musical attributes such as melody, instrumentation or harmony in a similar fashion to a genetics project, but applied to music. From this, they developed Pandora Radio, which uses these musical attributes, according to information provided by Pandora, "to capture the musical identity of the song" and based on this information, choose a song with similar attributes from its vast song database. The company makes money through online advertising.

Getting Started with Pandora
Start by going to www.pandora.com and register or log in, then click Start New Radio Station, enter the name of an artist, song or genre; and the program begins creating a personal radio station based on your selection. Depending on your selection, Pandora may play a song by the given artist, the exact song or it may choose a different artist or song with similar musical qualities if it doesn't have permission to play what you requested. If for some reason, Pandora gets it wrong, you can click "Hey, That's Not What I Wanted." After the first song, it selects another song with similar qualities. By clicking "Why is this song playing?" the site provides information on which specific musical attributes relate the song to your original choice.

You have the options of pausing or fast-forwarding the music, skipping songs and giving songs a thumbs-up or thumbs-down rating. With each rating, you "teach" Pandora what you like and dislike, so that the experience is completely personalized. If you like the song, Pandora plays more like it, and if you don't, it will never play that song or any like it again. You can create up to 100 unique stations and if you want to own a particular song, you can download it legally from iTunes or Amazon.com directly from the site.

Other Features
What's more, you can add other artists or songs you like to a station’s program, or create a new station from any song that plays. Pandora also offers the options of sharing your stations with other users and finding others who enjoy the same types of music. The Pandora blog provides information on recent updates to the service. Among the most recent changes are:

• Mobile access to the site through AT&T and Sprint
  
• An application created specifically for the new iPhone 3G. You can listen to your existing stations and create new ones directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch.
  
• The Pandora Video Series, a series of music-related videos including musician interviews, performances, and backstage videos.
  

Pandora is comprehensive, easy to use and free. It's a unique way to expand your musical horizons and find great music tailored to your own personal tastes.

Ron Miller, for Digital Landing