Thing 23 Radio Streaming

I was intrigued by Pandora's description of creating a customized radio station for me, so I opened a free account. I created different radio stations with some of my favorite artists: The Beatles, Abba, Josh Groban, and I also created radio stations based on the songs The River by Garth Brooks, Smooth by Santana, and Mambo No. 5 by Vega. I also made a separate station by mixing all of these stations together. What is interesting is Pandora picks songs and artists similar to those you initially started with. If you don't like a song you can tell them you don't like it by clicking on the thumb downs sign; similarly if you like a song you can click the thumbs up sign. By clicking thumbs down, Pandora will try to stay away from songs like that; conversely, if you click thumbs up Pandora will try to find more songs similar to that. You can also "skip" 6 songs an hour; you don't have to listen to them, but you also are not voting on them. It's a little different than I thought. You can't listen to songs on demand, or rewind because of licensing issues. Also, the station picks the songs for you to put in your station. You can't search for a song (unless its your "seed" or first song for your station) and add it to your station. Still, it's as close as you can get to an Ipod or Mp3 player for free. It's also very tempting to keep voting all day long to "perfect" your stations!