Roland K. Smith Loves Pandora… And So Do I
I’ve talked about Pandora in the past:
It’s an Internet radio that you choose the style of music. For example, if you have a favorite song, you can build a radio station based on that song. Pandora will miraculously play tracks that are very similar to your favorite music. I am continually surprised at how good it is at finding music that I want to listen to.
The ever-popular, Roland K. Smith had some wonderful things to say about Pandora here:
One of my currently favorite programs is Pandora Internet Radio. It’s playing right now on my laptop and it’s my most used application on my iPhone. This morning while taking a stroll on the treadmill listening to Pandora I thought about my first transistor radio back in 1957.
Transistor radios were only a year or two old when I got one for a birthday present. The wonder of these radios were that they operated on batteries and could be taken anywhere. I spent many hours riding on a tractor in the fields that summer listening to music on that AM radio. Forty years has seen an enormous change in our ability to consume music.
Pandora has brought back the beautiful serendipity of finding a song that you love. I have bought more music on iTunes because of Pandora than because of any other recommendations. Sure, Amazon and iTunes can recommend music to me, but that is based strictly on sales instead of music similarity. Plus, with Pandora, I get to listen to the whole song before I decide whether I want to buy it.
With Pandora on my iPhone [iTunes Link], I can listen to music while I’m driving, just like I used to with the radio. In fact, on a road trip from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas, we listened to Pandora the whole way. The only time it dropped out was when we didn’t have cell coverage on that twenty mile strip of Arizona. It works wonderfully on 3G and EDGE.
If you have been missing the beauty of radio in days gone by, then give Pandora a chance.