Here in pandora.com, nothing is related with Pandora,a Greek mythical lady who unleashed the evils by opening the evil box. Rather, Pandora.com is a flash based free streaming music service in today's context. They offer free and high quality streaming music but at the cost of commercials splattered all around their site. For me, It doesn't bother me at all but for some, it might be annoying hence could turn them into Paid Listener from Free.
My Experience with Pandora.com
Pandora.com is something which you get easily hooked up within minutes and never want to get over of it. When I first checked this site, it offered me to type in my favorite artist name, or my type of music genre etc. and afterward it created a station based on that. Now, this part is so cool that it's playing only the music that I opt for. Nothing much, nothing less. It's that easy(comparing to those other services like jango etc,).
Since it creates station based on the keywords we enter, that is obvious it isn't real-time live stations. I mean, it's not like those real live stations in Winamp or other online version of live on-air radio stations where you can't pause songs or audio. Pandora.com lets us pause our music and start right off where we stopped before.
It is nagging that after certain period, pandora.com wants us to click 'I'm listening' button intermittently. Pandora.com is cautious about their bandwidth usage and making sure the streamed content be heard not wasted. I don't have any idea if that nagging is there for paid users too.
There is a cool feature which lets us rate the songs being played. You like it, rate it and give thumbs up, you don't like it - thumbs down. That makes sure the song won't be indexed next time for listening. Making it neat, it will now play only those songs we love the most. They have option for us to buy the music CD if we really like to keep it in our shelves. Just hit the 'menu' link on their player and we're all set.
In a sense, a pandora station is nothing but a playlist of songs but when I found that I couldn't skip to another song, not even forward/rewind except pause, I felt little cranky.
Those with Iphone/IpodTouch and any phones with Windows Mobile Edition can enjoy their service.
In a wholesome, I'm loving pandora.com 99 percent. You should give it a try no matter what. There is nothing to loose.
Update: I recently came to know that there is a geographical restriction on using Pandora online radio service. It's only accessible from within the United States because it is only licensed to stream within the US. Sorry guys. Upon little research, I found that there have been reports of successfully using Pandora on non-US regions using some proxy services.
According to Tim Westergren,founder of pandora.com, pandora An Internet Radio service is based on Music Genome Project. The project states
" We believe that each individual has a unique relationship with music - no one else has tastes exactly like yours. So delivering a great radio experience to each and every listener requires an incredibly broad and deep understanding of music. That's why Pandora is based on the Music Genome Project, the most sophisticated taxonomy of musical information ever collected. It represents over eight years of analysis by our trained team of musicologists, and spans everything from this past Tuesday's new releases all the way back to the Renaissance and Classical music. ..moreThank you for reading my post.
Comments
Hey there Navin,
First off, thanks so much for spreading the word about Pandora to your readers! That's so generous and we appreciate that. Regarding your readers, I would surmise that they may be located outside the US. Pandora is only licensed to stream within the US, so if they're located abroad, then they won't be able to listen to Pandora radio.
Feel free to send them along to our support team (pandora-support@pandora.com) who can address any individual problems they may be experiencing.
Cheers,
Jem
Listener Advocate @ Pandora
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Amit, you could try some proxy out there.