When you hear theoretical physicists talk about an infinite universe, or the concept of a multiverse, they always consider the possibility of worlds which are strikingly similar to ours but which vary in a single or very few details.  Maybe on this Earth you wear your favourite pair of green socks with the orange heels and toes every Thursay, but on some other planet an individual exactly like you wears an identical pair of socks — right down to the rapidly thinning patch on the bottom of the big toe — except this individual wears those socks every Wednesday.  Or whatever.

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I thought I would write a quick review of a website I have been using recently: Pandora Radio

Pandora radio has become my single source of music lately. I am typically working on-the-go and work on various computers throughout the day, so maintaining a single iTunes library has become difficult.

Pandora Radio Features: Pandora radio is a flash-based music streaming website with a massive library of full length songs from almost every genre. Unlike most radio stations, when you go to listen to a “station”, the song always starts from the beginning and you have the ability to skip songs. It is more of a library of music than a streaming radio station.

How do you use Pandora: When you start up Pandora, it will ask you to enter a song or artist that you want to listen to. Pandora will then create a station of similar music to that song. For example, when I just typed in “Gravity”, it told me that it was searching for music similar to “Gravity” by John Mayer, and first song it gave me was “In Repair” by John Mayer from Continuum, then “Early in the Morning” by Eric Clapton, and finally “I Forgot to be Your Lover” by Robert Clay. You cannot specify a song to listen to directly, but if you are not looking for any particular song and just want a playlist in the background of a certain genre, this is the solution for you. You are able to filter out songs you don’t like from the list and that “station” will avoid songs that are similar to that in the future. You can use the service without signing up (which is free) or you can sign up and all stations that you create will remain saved. I personally have four stations right now: Boards of Canada Station, Portishead Station, Asobi Seksu station, and Gravity Station.

How it Works: It creates a station just for you based off the music that you like. How this works is based on the music genome project that pandora has created. The music genome project has tagged hundreds of attributes to each song, and using these attributes can find music similar to whatever music you are looking for. It is an excellent means of finding music similar to that of your target song, and it has yet to give me a song that I have felt is far off from the music I am looking for.

Interacting with the Website: The website is all flash based, but does an excellent job of maintaining traditional usability. Tab orders are all appropriately implemented and nothing feels too “flashy.” In my opinion, it is a flash based website that accomplishes everything a flash based website should aim to.

Potential Drawback: There is one potential drawback that I haven’t yet been able to fully test in the website. Once I left my computer for a while and when I came back, Pandora stopped my music and was asking me if I was “still listening” because it didn’t want to stream music to a computer that was no longer listening to it. Now, on one level it was a good move on their part to save bandwidth, but on the other hand, if you are hosting a party or are looking to stream music in the background, I can see this being a problem. I believe it was only reacting to the fact that my computer went idle. I have never had to “click back” on the pandora player while working on another document or looking at another website; it has only come up when I have left the computer entirely.

Extra Goodies: Pandora also operates on Windows Mobile devices, select Sprint phones, and AT&T phones (congratulations iPhone …) so you can stream pandora in your car if you have unlimited wireless internet. Quite a bonus if you ask me!

Conclusion: Pandora is an excellent service. It is the first online radio service that I have used that has really stuck with me. I cannot reccomend it enough.

Other Reviews of Pandora:

[04/11/2006] CNET Pandora Review

[01/14/2009] CNET Pandora 2.0 for Iphone Review

[10/15/2007] Laptop Mag Pandora Review

References

[Pandora.com] Pandora Mobile Information

[Pandora.com] Pandora Genome Information