Pandora Radio

When I finally managed to get my new iphone, the first thing Tanya & Laura say is “You have to get Pandora Radio“. At first I’m wondering why on earth would I want an internet radio station on my phone when I can use my entire iTunes Library at last.. but then Erroch piped in and said I needed to check it out so I caved. So will you when you hear about all of this.

One of the difficult parts for me was having to wrap my head around what Pandora actually is. It really is like flipping through radio stations. Each ‘station’ will have themes, similarities, etc. How it obtains those ‘seeds’ are up to you. For better explanation, I’m going to take you through the process of getting setup. It’s how my mind works, so bare with me.

When you first go to Pandora you can get started right away without even having to create your own account. Everything is available to you except saving your stations and whatnot. I highly suggest making an account, even if you don’t want to bother with creating your own stations. Other users on Pandora can make their own stations and you’re welcome to find them and use them. You can see my profile as an example.

So, how do you find channels to listen to? Pick a song out of your head. Hover over the “Share” button and click “Find a shared station“. Type in the name and do a search. Depending on the song there might be some stations up or not. You can type anything you want into the station search: song name, artist name, keywords, etc. Feel free to experiment and find all the stations you want.
While you are listening to a station you can vote on a song to say if you liked it or not. Why should you? Well, if you like it, Pandora then takes a look at the qualities of that song and tries to make sure that the rest of the songs it puts in the station match. It’s not 100% perfect, but it’s pretty good at it. If you tell it you don’t like the song, then it removes that song from the station and whatever qualities that made it different it will try to ignore. One thing to note: if you try voting on a ‘shared’ station that someone else made, to make your vote count it will have to copy the station to your own listing then apply whatever changes you make. This means that if the original author makes any changes, you won’t see them because effectively you’re now listening to a different channel. This can be good if you find a channel you like but want to customize it to your taste. However, I simply prefer to make my own stations from the ground up.

To make your own station, it is pretty easy. Remember that song in your head that you really like? Well, this time, instead of going under the “Share” button go under the “About the Music” button and click on “Find a Song“. After you do the search for the song, go to that song’s page and you’ll see many things. From a blurb about the song, comments from other users, and a bunch of buttons under the album cover on the left. If it’s a song you really like, I suggest clicking the “Bookmark this Song” so you have easy access to it later. The next thing you can do is click “Create A Station“.
That will start a whole new station based around the qualities of that one song. If you want to do an artist rather than song that’s fine too. The only two things you can’t do is base one on a ‘style’ (ie Pop, Classical, Rock) or on a particular album. At first it confused me why they wouldn’t allow style, but then I realized that ‘style’ is very subjective. I might call something rock and you might call it alternative, etc. And how many times have you gotten an mp3 and found it’s genera completely mislabeled? No, it uses things like tempo, musical key, instruments, vocal types, etc to form the channel. But I digress.

Now you’ve just made your first channel. But, it’s very vague and not completely what you want. Time to customize it! Your first option is of course doing the thumbs up or thumbs down on a song, but you can do other things like add more songs and artists. So go to your profile page. It should open in a new window and leave your radio playing. If you look over on the far left of the window there will be a box labeled “Stations“. Click on the name of your station to open up it’s full listing. (Clicking the blue button with a white arrow will simply start playing that station, not edit it.)
On the station’s profile, you can do many things. The first is edit the station name and description. I find it better to label the station with what style I want it to portray and then add in a blurb about what artists and styles I’m looking for in the channel. If you do edit the name, you’ll need to refresh your radio window/tab for it to update. The next two sections are the important ones however: Artist Seeds and Song Seeds. The more seeds you have, the more qualities Pandora will have to apply to form the songlist for the station. You can easily add the choices right there on the page by clicking the “Add” button to the section you want to add to and filling in the artist or song title. Added something you now want to remove? That’s easy too. Just check the box next to the song or artist and click the “Remove” button.

Another good thing you can do on this page is correct any “Thumbs up” or “Thumbs Down” you’ve made to the songs on this station. I’ve already had it where I made some choices on a station I made that then completely changed the style of music I was getting off the station. The biggest thing to remember when applying a rating is this: Does this song BELONG on this station? Yes, you might LIKE it, but does it belong there? If you like it, you can hover your mouse over the song information in the player and between the thumbs up and down you’ll see a small arrow pointed up. There are several options, but one is the “Bookmark” where you can choose to bookmark the artist or the actual song. One other option I’ve fallen in love with is the “Move song to another station”. That will give it a thumbs down in the current station but give it a thumbs up in the selected one. Very handy indeed!

Once I had a station playing in the background I then went to town on the search page and bookmarked all the artists I liked, picked out specific songs I love, etc. Now I’m going through and putting channels together by going through my bookmarks. I’m still remember stuff I like. So happy it’s all dynamic. And the best thing is.. you get to find new artists and songs!

There are a lot more options and tons more information in the FAQ. I strongly suggest going through it sometime.

My only real wish is that I’d be able to listen to Pandora on my iphone in the background. But that’s not Pandora’s fault, that’s an Apple decision.