Opening Pandora's box - free music

Who says there's no Santa Claus? I just got the best present by wandering over to The Living Rockumentary, blog of Henning's School for The Dead, my old pals from the Baystate Hotel era. Brian, the busiest drummer in the Happy Valley, had a post up on the best music website, ever.

The aptly named Pandora has this Music Genome Project that creates a playlist for you. Basically if you hit the listen now button at the top right of the screen, it asks you for a favorite song or artist. It plays that and then chooses other songs and artists based on on that choice.

I put in the Youngbloods, so it's searching for challenging intrumentals with complicated lyrics for me. You can reject the ones you don't like. I've only rejected two so far. And I love not knowing what's coming next. It's like getting a present every 3 to 5 minutes.

It's a little spooky because every time you reject something, it modifies the list to exclude that song and I assume assigns some psychological criteria to your profile. You can also modify the lists in other ways and download music. Brian explains that part here. I suspect it's some government plot to compile a database but I joined anyway. So far the music has been worth it.

I signed up for the free service that says you have to listen to ads, but so far I haven't heard any. You can hear it ad free for three bucks a month. I'm going to wait to see how often I listen to it once the novelty wears off, before I decide. But an hour in, I'm really loving it.