I wrote in October about why I was reluctantly giving up Pandora, the personalised Internet music streaming service.
I’m very happy to say that I’m now able to reverse this decision. They’ve just released version 2, and have addressed almost all my criticisms.
Most importantly, there is now a free ad-supported version. I firmly believe that this service is a billboard for the music industry, who should therefore be underwriting it. Nevertheless, an ad-supported version will do for now. It’s not entirely clear what forms these ads will take (”you’ll notice us playing with different advertising forms over the coming months”). Display ads should be fine; audio clips played between music tracks will quickly have me reaching for the close button again.
The other major enhancement is the ability to edit all the preferences for a station, including the removal of artists/tracks added in error (which previously had the unfortunate effect of skewing the playlist well away from what you were aiming for).
I’m listening to my personalised Pandora station now. It started up with tracks from The Magnetic Fields, Neutral Milk Hotel, Bonnie Prince Billy and Patti Smith. Excellent - especially as 3 of these 4 artists were (appropriately) selected by Pandora based on the list of the artists/tracks I’d entered.