Music

When I’m using my laptop for work or pleasure I like to listen to music. In the past, I mainly listened to iTunes music through my laptop speakers. I have thousands of songs loaded in my iTunes account, but I get bored hearing music that I've selected.

Everything I have in my iTunes is there because I put it there, even if I rarely or never listen to it. I like the element of surprise when listening to music. Shuffling adds randomness, but you still have to decide what is going to be included in the shuffle.

Lately, I've been listening to Pandora, an online music discovery service based on the Music Genome Project. I like it so much I've been listening to it more than my iTunes music. (Since I've had some international visitors recently, I should mention that Pandora is not available outside the United States because of licensing issues.)

Basically, you customize your own radio stations based on music that you like. You start by selecting a seed—either a song or an artist—and Pandora will start playing songs with similar musical attributes. You can add variety by selecting additional songs and artists. With each song played, you can click thumbs up or thumbs down to indicate whether or not you like it, further tweaking your preferences. Whenever you select thumbs down, the song stops playing and Pandora starts a new song (you are limited to six skips per hour).

I’m amazed by the amount of music available through Pandora—from old standards to the latest hits. Last night my personal radio station played a wide variety including Etta James, Jim Croce, Gnarls Barkley and Taylor Swift. I have another radio station customized to play relaxing classical piano music. I listen to this when I’m trying to concentrate and don’t want to be distracted by lyrics.

I enjoy giving the thumbs up or down for songs, but it can be addicting and distracting. Also, Pandora occasionally plays audio ads between songs (unless you pay for ad-free service). This happens very rarely for me (I can listen for hours without hearing an ad) but this might be because I frequently click on songs to give thumbs up or down and therefore see visual ads on the website.

There are many additional features in Pandora like the ability to share stations with friends. One feature I like is the ability to bookmark a song, so I can remember a new song or artist I liked.

Some people will find it frustrating that you can’t play songs on demand (you will only hear a particular song when Pandora decides to play it), but if you like variety and discovering new music it’s worth checking out. And for some reason the music I play on Pandora through my laptop speakers sounds better than music I play from iTunes through the same speakers. I don’t know why that it is, and maybe it’s just my imagination.