This is a guest post. From my husband, Frankie. (Or, as he likes to call himself, Mr. KOAB.) I asked him to write about Pandora – since he’s the master of the music in our house. I just get to benefit!
On Friday, I joined Mara in the kitchen to do some preparation for Shabbat dinner. It was very quiet. For some reason, listening to ’80s hits always makes Shabbat prep so much easier.
So I turned to Mara and asked if I could turn on Pandora on her computer. She responded, “I don’t have Pandora installed. You never wrote me the post on Pandora you promised!”
Right she was. So here goes…
As many KOAB readers have mentioned, the public library is one of the best things going. Instead of ever needing to buy books or rent movies, the public library offers that all to you virtually for nothing (I would estimate we pay $2 a year in overdue charges, which is still a bargain!) If that’s the case, when it comes to music, Pandora is the public library on steroids.
In short, it is Internet radio with minimal ads. You go to Pandora.com and it takes care of the rest.
First pops up a screen that asks you for a musical preference. You can enter your favorite artists and it will instantly begin playing a song from that artist. The second song will be something similar from a different artist. You can also choose from genres of music – including 1980s Pop! Today’s Hits, Classic Rock, Smooth Jazz and dozens and dozens more.
To get the most of Pandora, it is best to register for a free account. Then when music plays, you will see on your screen buttons for “thumbs up,” “thumps down” and skip.
Give a song a thumbs up and Pandora will know it is on the right track for you music tastes. A thumbs down and you won’t hear that song again. Skip means maybe your just not in the mood for that. The more you listen and the more feedback you give, Pandora will use its Music Genome Project to tailor make the best music station for you.
Moreover, you can create several stations on your account for times you are in the mood for something different. Currently, I have eight stations I alternate between, including one for children’s music and another for comedy (with my favorites Cosby and Seinfeld).
In addition to having Pandora on my desktop and laptop computers, I have installed the Pandora app on my smartphone [note from Mara – here’s where to get the Android Pandora app and the iPhone Pandora app] and on my Blu-Ray player. All are linked to my account, so I can get the music of my choice wherever I am.
Best of all, Pandora is completely free. You can upgrade to Pandora One for $36 a year, but honestly, I don’t think it’s necessary.
Happy listening.
I’m so glad Frankie wrote this up, because I was always kind of clueless about how he got such great music! Have you signed up for Pandora? What’s your favorite station?
I LOVE Pandora!! And how funny because I always put mine on an 80s music station when I’m cleaning or cooking too! 🙂
The Living Social ads drive me a little bananas, but other than that it’s perfect, lol.
Too funny! And ITA on the Living Social ads!
With this caveat–we were trying to figure out why our broadband usage is so high at home. We were told by our provider that Pandora uses up a lot of it. Both my husband and I were streaming Pandora, sometimes on different devices simultaneously in different parts of the house. We’ve cut back considerably, but I won’t see how it affects our broadband consumption for awhile. I miss it. It’s great to just set it while you’re working, and I’m amazed at the wide variety of music available.
I decided to pay for Pandora since I am a writer, and I listen to it for hours on end while I write. I found the commercials distracting. I’ve found that sometime stations can start off with your favorite artist and then head off into a totally different type of music. If you use the Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down voting, it is pretty good about staying on track.
I’m a HUGE fan of Playlist.com. It’s more of a pain setting up your playlist(s), but once you do that, you will never hear a song that you don’t like. It’s quite simple, you search for your song & “add to playlist”.
On Pandora, however, you will often hear songs that you don’t care for. Another bad thing about Pandora (last I checked – which honestly was about a year ago) is that if you give a “thumbs down” to the same artist two times (again, not sure if this is 2 or 3 times or if this even still exists…), Pandora will not play that artist for you again. We all know that even our favorite artists have 2 songs that we don’t like. Thumbs them down and you won’t hear your artist(s) anymore…
Hi Frankie! Dash from all your friends out this way! 🙂