Your Own Personal Dance Party

I love the radio. There are some things about the radio I hate. I hate radio edits of songs. I hate hearing Lady Gaga's "Yoü and I" and "Nebraska" has been changed to "North Carolina." (It's distracting.) I hate going on long trips and changing the radio station partway through and as a result hearing the same song three or four or five times in a day.

But overall, I love the radio. I love music. Sometimes I even enjoy ads. Occasionally there are entertaining or informative shows. I can put up with a bunch of ads if I get to belt out at least one terrible pop song while I drive.

My only problem with the radio is that I gave my clock radio to my little brother years ago when I found an alarm clock with two-inch letters. I'm nearsighted. And as a result, I can't listen to the radio without my car.

My solution: Pandora Internet radio! (Other solutions include streaming the local radio stations, but Pandora is better except it doesn't tell me the weather.)

Pandora's history has been a little crazy, but now they seem to have come to an agreement with the party-pooping music business running people. For free, Pandora listeners get forty hours of music a month and a few ads. You can create a station based on a song or an artist, and then Pandora gives you songs that it feels you would like based on which ones you tell it you enjoy.

It's a neat little system. There are some kinks to work out. As far as I know, there is no way to tell it that while I like this song I don't care for the live version with the crowd. But I can put together a station whose basis is Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys and relive my childhood. And I can have a station full of Spanish artists that Pandora recommended to me. Now I can proudly sing about two lines of Shakira's "She-Wolf" in Spanish while doing dishes!

Oh, and for a mere $36 a year, you can get unlimited music with no ads. I'm not going to pony up for it, personally, but you may feel like it.

Check it out yourself at Pandora.com!

Signing off,

Maureen