I’ve never really used internet radio stations much. I have listened to some XM radio via my AOL account but I always find myself constantly changing stations because very often songs come on that i dont like, and i get frusterated having to shuffle through stations to find something else to play. So generally my personal preference is just to listen to my own personal music collection. That was until I discovered Pandora. This weekend I read Bill Machrone’s column in PC Magazine where he mentioned Pandora, a free online music service that builds your own stations based on similarities among songs and artists.

There is no software required to download or install, just head over to Pandora.com.
I tried it out via Firefox on a computer with a highspeed connection.
It took about a minute to load before it was up and running. The
interface is also really easy and intuitive. You start off by typing in
an artist you like. That artist becomes a station from which Pandora
brings up songs from that artist as well as music from other similar
artists. As you listen, you can instruct Pandora what to do with the
songs – for example, if you like a song, you can add it "your
favorites" so that you can buy it from Amazon or Itunes later on.
How
is the sound quality you ask? Though I am no audio conoseur, the
quality of the music sounds pretty great to me.
Pandora’s is totally
free, but it is ad supported. If you can’t stand a few ads here and
there, they offer an inexpensive ad-free account for $36 a year, or $12
for 3 months.
As of late I’ve been desprately looking for ways to
discover new music that I would enjoy, and Pandora is now it for me.
But be forewarned, Pandora is highly addictive… possibly more
addictive then YouTube.
The radio star lives!