A NEW MUSIC SERVICE CALLED PANDORA

Created in 2000, the founders of Pandora wanted to find a way to help people discover new music. What they came up with was a way to analyze music using 400 different attributes. Once a tune is analyzed its characteristics can then be compared to those of other tunes, and similarities can be found. The theory is that if you like a song then you'll likely be interested in other music with similar attributes.

If all of that sounds like a bunch of technical hooey I suggest you reserve your judgement until after you give Pandora a spin. The service is free if you don't mind ads, and music is streamed to you through your browser, so there's nothing to install. If you'd rather do without the ads you can pony up a paltry $36 a year or $12 every 3 months for the service. I have to say that the ads are not that annoying, but $36 bucks a year is pittance for what you get. Think of it as a subscription service that you don't really have to subscribe to.

The Pandora client is the essence of simplicity; once you've registered for an account (one of the simplest registrations I've gone through. I didn't even have to give up a blood sample or bank statement) you are presented with a window. Enter the name of an artist or a song title and Pandora does the rest.


PANDORA'S CLIENT

Music starts playing almost immediately, usually it's the song or a selection from the artist you've entered. The subsequent musical selections are picked by Pandora using the process I described earlier, and you may be surprised by the songs and artists it picks. Artists that you may have never heard of, and artists that you know playing tunes that you may have never connected to the artist get playtime through Pandora. It's fun just to see what Pandora picks next.

There really isn't a better way to find new music on the Internet.

Browse the Pandora Web site and you'll find information about the Music Genome Project, on which Pandora is based. You'll also find an area called 'Backstage', which is a music search engine, letting you find information on all sorts of artists and songs.

As Pandora goes through its generated playlist if you don't care for a particular song you can give it the thumbs down and Pandora stops playing the tune and loads up another. You can also give a selection a 'thumbs up', which leaves it in your list, or you can bring up a menu which lets you get more info about the song, album, or artist. If you really like the song you can elect to buy from or the album from iTunes or Amazon.

The end result is that Pandora will adjust itself to include tunes that are more to your liking, and you'll have a playlist that contains musical selections that you like.

SQUEEZEBOX

Want more convenience? You can get a Squeezebox from Slim Devices and listen to Pandora selections through your home stereo.

Stop by Pandora and give the service a whirl. Good stuff there.