the case against .NET

A number of bloggers have been writing about Pandora. I found it via Scoble, and have been trying it for almost a week.

It works like this: you tell it a band/music artist you like, and it builds a radio station (streamed over your broadband connection) including that artist and others you may like. You can click to indicate you like or dislike a particular song, and can also add other bands to the station.

Pandora is driven, not by matching tastes of multiple users, but by the input of a panel of analysts (music specialists) - see this post on the Pandora blog.

After a short trial period, Pandora is now open to the public. An annual subscription costs $36, but you can try it for 10 hours first.

There are some frustrations, notably the reliance on a web browser (it uses Flash), and the fact that you can’t remove an artist from a radio station (if you changed your mind, say), or even see which artists a station is built from. There have been glitches with certain songs too: I’ve listened to 2 badly mangled Elvis Costello tracks, but have had no trouble with any other artist. It’s also a little US-centric at present, both in the choice of songs, and the fact that it allows you to purchase music from Amazon.com, but not other Amazon stores.

Here’s how I’m currently using Pandora: I created a station around 20 of my favourite bands. Within a few tracks, other favourite artists began appearing, as well as some good stuff I’d never heard before.

Highly recommended - but beware of spending too much money on the new bands you’re sure to find!