Rocking My Computer

I may be a bit biased as someone who was recently in charge of a web 2.0 development effort but I am simply amazed that they can do all this fancy shit just using tubes!

My latest internet boyfriend is Pandora Radio (don’t worry del.icio.us we can still sleep together). Lately my interaction with the 2300 songs on my ipod has been the music equivalent of “I have nothing to wear!” Back when I was cool and went to lots of concerts I was always flush with new music but with the exception of picking up new releases by artists I already like my ears haven’t heard anything new in ages and they are very angry. Usually when this happens I fire up internet radio (I always liked indie pop rocks) at work and try to remember to jot down the names of songs I like. This week Time magazine (I believe I already established how uncool I am but if not… here ya go) recommended that I try out Pandora.

Here’s how it works:

You add artists that you like and it plays songs by those artists and other artists that the software has determined are similar (recommendations are determined via The Music Genome Project (speaking of neural networks) and are surprisingly accurate). As songs are playing you can vote for or against them further refining your recommendations (ala amazon or netflix). If you click on a song you can bookmark the song or the artist so you have an easily accessible list of songs that you like (the list links directly to the itunes store). Pandora also has an extensive music library (backstage) that allows you to easily research a song, artist or album. Another handy feature is the “on tour” link that takes you directly to a list of tour dates (I’ll be seeing Ben Folds on November 17^th – Pandora may even bring back my cool.). In addition to being a great idea Pandora is expertly executed, everything I want to do is amazingly easy and the results always satisfying. The application is pretty without being fancy and the UI is intuitive.

My bookmarked songs from this week:

Amtrak is for Lovers by Houston Calls

Now Come Home by Bill Bryant

When U Love Somebody by Fruit Bats

One Green Hill by Oysterband

Me Just Purely by Brendan Benson

And much like del.icio.us if you join you can be my buddy and listen to my radio station. Just what you need, more ways to connect with me.

Final Thought: I am so impressed that this morning in the shower I became paranoid that Pandora must be illegal and will soon be taken away from me ala napster.