renee and elliott

I have been a faithful listener of Live365 Internet radio. (They offer a FREE basic membership, with ads. But if you want to get a VIP membership with them, send me email and I’ll send you a 30% off referral.) They have an excellent variety of stations–everything from Downtempo Electronica to Barber Shop Quartet! I enjoy a somewhat obscure collection of electronic music, with brief ventures into “new wave” music from the 80’s and 90’s. And I have about 15 hours of music in my iPod. But I still get bored with my music library. So internet radio is good for me. But even that gets stale. (I already recognize the rotations there, too!)

So today I went to Digitally Imported to hear something different. I saw an interesting text link, so I decided to check it out. I was very impressed at what I saw.

Pandora allows you to create your own stations, based on artists you like. Then it asks for your feedback on EACH SONG. It even allows you to skip past the song that is currently playing.

They offer a beautiful explanation of their name:

The name Pandora means “all gifted” in Greek. In ancient Greek mythology, Pandora received many gifts from the Gods, including the gift of music, from Apollo. She was also, as we all know, very curious. Unlike those Gods of old, however, we celebrate that virtue and have made it our mission to reward the musically curious among us with a never-ending experience of music discovery.

Here is an example of how the songs are displayed. (See the little “thumbs up” marks on the 1st two?)

The ONLY thing I don’t like about it is that you cannot play it through iTunes. We use the Apple AirPort Express with Air Tunes to stream music from iTunes to remote speakers. So unless the music can be played through iTunes, I have to manually connect the speakers to my computer. But other than that, I’m very pleased. It’s always nice to find new ways of consuming the life force of MUSIC! Thank goodness for broadband!

~renee