Pandora and Imeem

I love music. I don’t listen to the radio much, since I have audio books in my car, but I like having some music in the background when I’m doing schoolwork or programming on the computer. I have an extensive MP3 collection somewhere, but I have no MP3 player (I know, what decade am I living in?) and hauling out the CDs is kind of a pain.

www.pandora.com
Instead, I use an online music streaming site that I found a couple of years ago. If you want the radio experience online, but do not like the playlists you find at places like radio.aol.com, check out www.pandora.com. Just enter in an artist or song title that you like and the “Music Genome Project” will put together a streaming playlist that features similar artists. I have been introduced to quite a few new artists that I may have never heard this way. You can customize your playlist by marking songs you like or dislike until the station plays the type of music you want to hear. It is revolutionary as far as streaming music goes. I do not see why more companies don’t adopt this model. If you sign up, let me know and I’ll share a station or two with you.

www.imeem.com
Duddy recently introduced me to another music station. This one is like MySpace for playlists. People upload their favorite music on their profiles, and other people are free to link to it in their own playlists. The result is a huge database of songs with which to build endless playlists. Unfortunately, it appears record labels are flagging their artists’ work slowly but surely on the site. Instead of complete tracks for these artists, you’ll only get 30 second samples. Even ignoring those f-wit record executives, you can make a mighty playlist with everything available. You can also share tracks and entire playlists with others. You can find me by searching for merlintwizard under “People”. I’ve got one eclectic playlist and a couple others favorited. Try it out at www.imeem.com while there are still good songs online.