Pandora.com - too cool!

[g.]

Sorry, Phil,

 

I know it's a drag to be onto something good and elicit nothing but blank stares or So What ... I just barely keep my local collection in rotation and find enough time to do all the other things I have to do. I'll try to get some going.

[Phil W]

Understood. Mostly, I just have it going in the background at work. I hardly ever find time to listen to it at home.

[Thomas Wilburn]

For people who have been using it a while--can I build a station that's based on all the different music I listen to, or should I separate them by genre a bit? In other words, if I were to just add and remove stuff from one station over a month, would I still get varied music, or will it zero in on the mean?

[Mighty Thumb]

Phil-

 

I've been groovin' on your Superstition station most of the day at work. Even put it out over our background music system in the building for a while. Good stuff, thanks!

 

I'll try to share some of mine when I get a few minutes.

[Phil W]

Thomas,

I prefer a large number of specific stations, then I flip between them and fine tune them. Sometimes I'm wary of giving feedback as I have to doublethink how the feedback will affect the station. When my Birds of Fire station played an Albert Ayler track that I loved, I let the cmputer know that I liked it, then regretted it as my wild, electric fusion channel became an acoustic jazz station (which I also love, but I wanted on a separate station).

I've not experimented in the way you outline.

Mighty Thumb, the Superstition station is my favourite so far:love:

I'd like to hear some of yours, MT. Glad you liked it.

[ArwinH]

I ten to use pandora the same way you do phil, I don't like leaving any feedback becauseof the same reasons. I also have a lot of varied stations that I sort through. It's amazing how one of my stations will lead me to 4 others that I wouldnt have even thought of. I've been telling alot of people about Pandora, some are just as hooked as I am. It's amazing how fast this thing spreads!

[TBW]

Folks - i've really enjoyed reading these many posts. Very interesting to see what trained musicians think of the service. From what I understand this is a forum of pretty serious musicheads, so the kind words mean all that much more. Seeing as that you're all bass players, how does 128K work for you? And what do you do for speakers? Cheers. Tim (company founder)

[Phil W]

Hi Tim, and welcome!

Do you know Gordo's Burritos in Berkeley? Mn they're good!

I haven't had any problem with the bitrate. I play my PC through a decade(plus)-old Sharp 'boombox' that has 5 speakers and this weird X-bass thing. Cool sound, but I'm not an audiophile.

At home, I listen on a pair of Sennheiser cans but I'm thinking of running a cable across the room to my hifi amp and speakers which I use to pay my DVD/TV and hifi stuff through. (Mordaunt-Short speakers).

Great site Tim, as I've said before and layout has that simplicity and usability that makes sites popular.

If I hear something I really like, that I don't already know, I google in another window to find the line up and occasionally the album name if I can't read it.

Cheers!

[alexclaber]

Originally posted by TBW:

...how does 128K work for you? And what do you do for speakers? Cheers. Tim (company founder)

Hi Tim - nice to see you down with the people!

 

128k is fine - same bitrate as my iPod is encoded at, so perfectly good quality. Sometimes glitches if I'm downloading big files simultaneously but that's to be expected. I use some £7 computer speakers, which although they do a great job when monitoring recordings as (remarkably) they do show up warts and all, they don't actually sound very pleasant, especially for a bassoholic like myself. Really need to run a cable through to my main hi-fi but it's quite a long way away!

 

Originally posted by Phil W:

I play my PC through a decade(plus)-old Sharp 'boombox' that has 5 speakers and this weird X-bass thing.

Now that is weird - unless I'm very much mistaken, I have the model below in my kitchen: It's a big squat beast with 'back2back' cassette deck, analogue tuner, no CD but phono line-in, ~6" mid-bass speakers, tiny tweeters and your's has the additional 'sub-woofer' which thumps out beneath the tape deck. And of course the big X-bass button and red LED on the front! I got mine for my 11th birthday in 1989...

 

Alex

[Phil W]

Sounds identical . . . I guess that makes us brothers now!

Mine has a stereo line input though, so I'm not sure it's exctly the same. Model number WQ-T352E(BK). It was my wife's before we were married and she was going to throw it out because it was dusty and oily from being in the kitchen!!!!

It's a great speaker system for work, I use it with Pandora, downloaded stuff and also when playing CDs and DVDs on the computer.

Pandora has just played 'In a Silent Way' over it and now 'Seventh Arrow' by Weather Report. Miroslav Vitous sounds imperious!

[Phil W]

I'm picking up some great potential cover tunes using Pandora. The other thing is that I never realised quite how much I enjoyed Pat Metheney's music until Pandora frequently led me back there: stuff from 'Imaginary Day' that I've really loved listening to.

 

My favourites so far -

http://www.pandora.com/people/feilik

[alexclaber]

The item in question:

 

http://www.thehumanzoo.com/alex/boombox.JPG

 

Welcome to the '80s! And now back to Pandora...

 

Alex

[Phil W]

Not quite yet, that is almost the exact model I'm looking at right now to the right of the monitor- except mine has a weird shaped long sub-bass speaker thing along the bottom and a button for Surround Sound next to the X-bass button. -weird!

I just took a snap with my cellphone - I'll post it [here] tonight!

http://usera.imagecave.com/feilik/24-01-06_1351-copy.jpg

 

Yes - back to Pandora!

[alexclaber]

Originally posted by Phil W:

Not quite yet, that is almost the exact model I'm looking at right now to the right of the monitor- except mine has a weird shaped long sub-bass speaker thing along the bottom and a button for Surround Sound next to the X-bass button. -weird!

I just took a snap with my cellphone - I'll post it [here] tonight!

I remember choosing mine - it was £79.99 but for another £20 you could get the improved model with the extra subwoofer and 'surround sound' thingummies - unfortunately beyond my 11 year old self's budget!

 

Alex

[SteveC]

Pretty damn cool. What a great way to broaden your listening.

[getz out]

I'm so hooked... can't stop listening.

[cloclo]

some info on how they work:

 

http://www.stevekrause.org/steve_krause_blog/2006/01/pandora_and_las.html

[Davo-London]

Cool

 

this is so clever. Where has it been all this time.

 

AND NO STUPID DJs CHATTING INCESSENTLY ...

 

Davo

[Phil W]

Update!

 

I got an email from Tim Westergen, founder to let me know about the new 'Community' features.

 

The coolest thing about this is that it lets you search for other users with similar tastes and then access their station presets. This then allows you to add, and customise, a range of pre-made stations. Seems good!

 

 

Tim:

"This is the beginning of our effort to create a more complete place on the site for listeners to share and discover new music with fellow Pandora listeners."

 

I guess adding the commnunity features allows them a piece of the 'networking' pie that has made the youtube and myspace people rich.

 

I have a lot of respect for Pandora and what they are trying to do. I use it a fair deal at work.

 

 

My profile:

 

http://www.pandora.com/people/feilik

[Tom Capasso]

I come and go with this depending on how much listening I can do at work and how much studying I have to do with my band.

 

It's very cool.

 

A while back I wrote asking about some of the songs that would come up and the use of feedback. Bassically you craft your own stations better if you give feedback.

 

I've used this to listen to music that I can't get anymore (anyone remember Bloodrock? Pandora does) as well as artists I like.

 

One very cool thing happened. On one station (I forget which) I heard a cool version of the Talking Heads "Psycho Killer" by The Flying Picketts - they are a vocals-only group. Putting them in to build a station opened up quite a world of music from the very rich to very funny. Now I have a station that plays the Picketts, Rockapella, and other acapella groups.

 

Tom

[wraub]

I also tend to spend a lot of time on Pandora. Definitely one of the best sources for music on the 'net thingy, even with its quirks.

It's nice to know the minds involved care and communicate with users.

 

I'll stick around there a while...

 

Peace,

 

wraub

[Phil W]

And now it has a shuffle play feature.

 

Just click on the QuickMix button. You can choose which of your stations to shuffle from - great for work!

 

Except that on my work PC occasionally a track doesn't play but is silent and I have to FF to the next sing. Hmm, probably have to update my Flash player.

[Phil W]

Yeah, this has just thrown up Rufus and Chaka Khan followed by D'Angelo followed by Ornette Coleman Quartet followed by a rare Bob Marley track followed Shakatak followed by some minimalist/electronica/music concete from someone called Mylena Bergeron.

 

You'd never hear that on a regular radio station!

[Phil W]

Anybody hear of the legislative threat against Pandora and that ilk in the US. It seems things are getting a little nore promising.

 

http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/

[Bottomgottem]

OK...so I'm a little late hooking up with Pandora. Holy cow, this is great!!!

 

It's too bad that they are being forced to block international users.

[Phil W]

I'm still getting it. Not sure how effective the block is.

[Phil W]

Dig the new look!

 

My profile

http://www.pandora.com/people/feilik

 

Listening to a Quickmix right now.

[Phil W]

The sad, sad news from founder Tim Westergen:

(MCPS/PRS sucks - they are so short-sighted and outdated)

 

" hi, it's Tim,

 

This is an email I hoped I would never have to send.

 

As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.

 

Based upon the IP address from which you recently visited Pandora, it appears that you are listening from the UK. If you are, in fact, listening from the US, and are denied access from Pandora on or after January 15th please contact Pandora Support: pandora-support@pandora.com.

 

It continues to astound me and the rest of the team here that the industry is not working more constructively to support the growth of services that introduce listeners to new music and that are totally supportive of paying fair royalties to the creators of music. I don't often say such things, but the course being charted by the labels and publishers and their representative organizations is nothing short of disastrous for artists whom they purport to represent - and by that I mean both well known and indie artists. The only consequence of failing to support companies like Pandora that are attempting to build a sustainable radio business for the future will be the continued explosion of piracy, the continued constriction of opportunities for working musicians, and a worsening drought of new music for fans. As a former working musician myself, I find it very troubling.

 

We have been told to sign these totally unworkable license rates or switch off, non-negotiable...so that is what we are doing. Streaming illegally is just not in our DNA, and we have to take the threats of legal action seriously. Lest you think this is solely an international problem, you should know that we are also fighting for our survival here in the US, in the face of a crushing increase in web radio royalty rates, which if left unchanged, would mean the end of Pandora.

 

We know what an epicenter of musical creativity and fan support the UK has always been, which makes the prospect of not being able to launch there and having to block our first listeners all the more upsetting for us.

 

We know there is a lot of support from listeners and artists in the UK for Pandora and remain hopeful that at some point we'll get beyond this. We're going to keep fighting for a fair and workable rate structure that will allow us to bring Pandora back to you. We'll be sure to let you know if Pandora becomes available in the UK. There may well come a day when we need to make a direct appeal for your support to move for governmental intervention as we have in the US. In the meantime, we have no choice but to turn off service to the UK.

 

Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008.

 

Again, on behalf of all of us at Pandora, I'm very, very sorry.

 

tim_signature.jpg

 

-Tim Westergren

(Pandora founder)"

[Bottomgottem]

That does indeed suck, Phil.

[Tenstrum]

Checked this out last night.

 

Freaking awesome! One of the best websites ever!

 

I have 2 channels at the moment. A "Tool" channel and a "Stone Temple Pilots" channel. I need to create a bluegrass channel....

 

Wish I could get this at work, but the Network Nazis have it blocked. It would be most useful. At home I have Music Choice on cable radio and like it a lot so I doubt I would use it at home. I just need to get that Data Plan from Verizon and use my phone as a modem and hook it into my laptop so that I can completely bypass the lock downs at work.

 

At any rate, Pandora is really one bad @$$ concept!