Friday, December 16, 2005

Pandora for new music that fits your taste

Now that I'm out of school and can no longer rely on the buzz from the "cool kids" for suggestions of new music to try, and I don't go to concerts around campus etc, I've found it tough to find new music that I like. Pandora attempts to help out in this area, and seems to work really well (after 30 minutes of using it). I started with Alison Krauss, Beck, Jurassic 5, Neil Young, and Dire Straits, and have already found new artists I would have never thought to check out such as:
- The Greencards (on Alison Krauss station)
- Daniel Lanois (on the Neil Young station)

The stations keep separate content separate; so it doesn't do something stupid like try to combine Jurassic 5 and Alison Krauss to return a rappin' fiddler. You get to listen to the entire songs as they are queued up on your radio stations, and get to rate them as they go by (thumbs up or thumbs down). When you give it the thumbs down, it skips to the next song. Apparently they've managed to get licenses to do this by restricting the number of songs you can skip per hour, and not letting you pick exactly what you're going to listen to. Whatever the case, this is the coolest site I've come by in a while.


Read more at www.pandora.com/