Breaking out of radio purgatory!

By Drew Kwashnak

At one time or another you always find yourself in radio purgatory; where every station is running commercials or worse, talking. Just about every major radio station out there has a means on their website to stream their show to your computer. Unfortunately this means you get commercials and talking DJs not only in your car, but at your desk too! Don't you wish you could find a station that just plays the music you want?

What I've found to be the best solution for radio purgatory has been the Internet radio station Pandora. Unlike listening to an over-the-air station where they play music without any of your input, with Pandora you set up your stations based on an artist, album, song or genre and as songs are selected you vote for those you like, and those you don't.

According to the Pandora website:

“Pandora is based on the Music Genome Project, the most sophisticated taxonomy of musical information ever collected. It represents over eight years of analysis by our trained team of musicologists, and spans everything from this past Tuesday's new releases all the way back to the Renaissance and Classical music.” [1]

So in other words when you want to listen to Mozart, you don't end up with Metallica!

Because of this work with the Music Genome Project, I have found that the selection of appropriate and related music has been very good. Even then, sometimes a song comes through that makes me wonder, “How did THAT get picked?” Usually I end up voting it off my station rather than looking why it got picked.

The selection process is actually very easy. Each song that is played offers to show information such as Lyrics, Artist Bio and Similar Artists. Between voting for or against the song there is a Menu of choices like

• I'm Tired of this song, which puts the song on the shelf for a while.
• Why was this song selected, which I think is self-explanatory
• Move song to another section will move the song to one of the other stations you have saved, voting it down for the current station and up for the new one.
• New Station... will allow you to create a new stations based on the artist or song.

This Flash-based player is compact and very easy to navigate. For other devices, I believe there is an App for Pandora available for the iOS products iPhone, iPod and iPad as well as Android and possibly others. In addition there are DVRs, TiVo and radios available to play Pandora through the system's speakers to really blow out your neighbor's windows.

With all these great features, you may wonder “what's the catch?” The catch is that you are limited with the basic, free membership to 40 hours of play time a month and a single advertisement every so often. The commercials come as one commercial once in a while, which is more tolerable than stations running commercial after commercial until there are more commercials than music!

If you run out of time, the music stops but that isn't the end of it! At that point you are given a pair of choices; pay $0.99 to continue playing the rest of the month with unlimited play time, or spend $36 per year for their premium Pandora One subscription. I listen at work and pause when I am not at my desk. Usually I run out about 2 to 2 ½ weeks into the month. So I opt for the $0.99 for the rest of the month option.

When you run out of time, you get two choices.

With the Pandora One subscription you get unlimited playing time, a higher bit rate for better music quality, no advertisements of any sort and the availability of a desktop player that doesn't require you to leave a browser open, using the Adobe Air technology.

I have found Pandora to be one of the best Internet radio stations I have come across for listening while I am at work. It provides multiple stations to fit my often wildly changing moods, and keeps the songs relevant. So the next time you want to re-enact Tom Cruz’s dance moves from Risky Business, or croon your spouse with some Sinatra, give Pandora a try.

Drew Kwashnak goes through vast musical mood swings in the course of a workday. Pandora has helped to sooth the savage beast whether he's head banging to heavy metal, or meditating to a Zen like state with piano solos and lots and lots in between.