Pandora

Pandora, Inc., has been a driving force in the internet radio movement, moving it from today’s commercial ridden MTV into a radio that will play you music that fits to your tastes, but leaving out horrendous advertisements.

This program allows you to create radio stations by starting out asking you what kind of music you like. You feed it information, and it immediately begins suggesting songs that you might like based off of that. Honesty is key with this program, because every song that you say you like affects your ‘tastes’.

Your taste is affected by a simple Yes/ No system of thumbs-up, or thumbs-down. As can be seen in the image, the interface is simple and forthright, and perfectly sleek for the iPhone. There is an option at the top-right which allows you to see why the ‘Music Genome Project’ has suggested this song, and it’s extremely thorough.

If you don’t want to listen to a certain song anymore, you can choose thumbs-down if you don’t like it, or you can actually just skip to the next suggestion. On the web-based program, there is an option of simply telling Pandora to ‘not play this track for a while’, but that option is missing from the iPhone application. While very handy, it’s rare to have a track play so often that you grow sick of it playing.

Something I found interesting is that you can’t actually see how far through the song you are. A few of the options from the site are missing, but it really isn’t that large of a loss. The program works extremely well and manages to keep the idea of Pandora secure and complete. Overall, there are a couple options missing, but it is a delightful and full application.

Something to look for: I noticed that sometimes, when you’re skipping tracks, it may load late. A perk of this, though, is that the album art actually unfurls down, like laying wallpaper. It’s quite the sight.