Pandora.com

I was working a little overtime at work the other day, and as the office was empty, I decided I'd like to have some music. The trouble was I didn't really have anything to listen to. I recalled that Isiah would load up music through a website called Pandora, so I booted it up and found out it was part of the Music Genome Project that I heard about from a friend a while back.

Essentially Pandora plays music from a substantial library, but it also has a very detailed analysis of the aspects of its songs, and by giving various songs a thumbs up or down, it learns what you like to listen to, and then plays songs of a similar style. You setup a series of personalized radio stations that you can hop between, and you can further adjust each one. You make these stations by giving it at least one song or band to start with, or you can boot up existing genre groups, or use someone else's shared stations... and then tweak them to your tastes.

Now I'm no music aficionado, so I had my friend Jake try it out, and he was rather impressed with it's ability to work with music that you don't often hear on the radio. He gave it a few bands and songs he likes and it built a surprisingly good station for us to listen to while playing video games.

Best part: It's free. There is a pay version of it that removes adds, but I'm happy to let it sit open and show adds because I use it for listening, and they do banner adds instead of audio adds.

In short, I recommend giving it a bit of a try. It's a nifty toy, and good way to get some songs playing.