So Emusic didn't make the list of a place to buy music? I don't know how much random stuff I have found there, and until the record label decides they want more money and pull it off Emusic, its normally the cheapest out there. Also for music blogs, what about 'music for robots' and 'neon gold beat company' (formerly goodweatherforairstrickes). If anything, search for some of the old M3 volume compilations/samplers that goodweatherforairstrikes put out. Just my two cents and happy music hunting.
What, no mention of "The Social" on Zune as a way to discover new music? Shocking.
I actually do get a lot of my new music idea from friends by visiting their homes and listening to their songs. I long for the days before all of the music stations were owned by a handful of companies and different stations actually played different music. What a novel concept that was.
@Monty: "I long for the days before all of the music stations were owned by a handful of companies and different stations actually played different music." -- mee too.
Zune also has the Channels and it seems to download stuff surreptitiously, only to surprise you in shuffle mode. I've also found that the shuffle algorithm on the Zune works a little better than on the iPod classic, but it might just be me.
I have a ton of George Carlin and every so often, the Zune will throw in a 3 minute Carlin routine.
Speaking of iPod, Leander Kahney did a great article about five years back on the music discovery aspect of iTMS. And I'm surprised you didn't even mention "Genius", even though it just recommends things for purchase - usually with several items already in your library.
@rimshot515: Maybe 15-20 years ago, record labels, though "all about the money", did a good job of weeding out the good from the bad and nurturing the good to be better. But just a few years later in teh latter 1990s, the consolidation of radio with Clearchannel and the consolidation of concert venues under Ticketmaster limited the selction to the point where being "all about the money" meant being all about no options aside from tween stars.
@strider_mt2k: May I ask what software you use (plan to use)? I use Jinzora to autobuild playlists of file addresses for streaming but it can be a bit clunky/buggy at times and I have to have my web server running 24/7 for it to work. Looking for a possible alternative.
Overall, this is not a big deal for me, as Pandora is not my primary means of listening to music, but rather my means of dabbling without paying for a subscription or torrenting. If I like a song enough, I'll give it a thumbs up. If I like it enough to listen to regularly, I'll click the link to iTunes or Amazon and pay for it. I hope that Pandora doesn't turn into regular radio (BECAUSE FM RADIO IS STUPID AD-RIDDEN AIRWAVE DIARRHEA), but if it keeps it alive, s'ok.
It's been a while since I've used Pandora. I've always preferred Last FM. I hated having to thumbs down all the crappy music I didn't want to listen to. With Last FM it never made me listen to million shitty songs I don't care about.
I hope I don't share Mr. Krypton's arrogance, but I agree that Slacker's long been better and is now that much moreso.
While I can't argue how popular Pandora is, I've never had a good experience with it: I suggest an artist, it plays a couple of songs by that artist, then it spirals into moronland and starts throwing completely inappropriate music at me based on weird crap it made up about sonic characteristics of the music. I minored in music with a year of theory and can't say I ever heard of the rationalizations Pandora uses for its awful choices.
I can't say Slacker's perfect either. But it shows me the list of bands it thinks are appropriate for an artist-based station and lets me customize to my heart's content. The ads are roughly hourly and amount to a brief ID, akin to the call letter sting you hear on a broadcast radio station at the top of the hour. And the portable means I don't have to have a persistent connection to listen for hours and hours.
So Pandora's got some catching up to do. Let's hope competition makes everything better.
@StutiCebriones: You know, you can customize a pandora station more than it sounds liek you did. If an artists' sound is too broad you can just put in specific songs, and then as you vote down songs you don't like, or ban artists altogether, and it learns from your choices.
Now perhaps they can build it so that, in addition to selecting the type of music you want to listen to, you can select the type of commercials you want to listen to? Then it will be a perfect match.
It is a great service, and whatever they have to do to keep it going sounds good to me.
04/15/09
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Best radio station for discovering new music, ever. Plus, (almost) no commercials!
04/15/09
04/15/09
I actually do get a lot of my new music idea from friends by visiting their homes and listening to their songs. I long for the days before all of the music stations were owned by a handful of companies and different stations actually played different music. What a novel concept that was.
04/15/09
04/15/09
I have a ton of George Carlin and every so often, the Zune will throw in a 3 minute Carlin routine.
Speaking of iPod, Leander Kahney did a great article about five years back on the music discovery aspect of iTMS. And I'm surprised you didn't even mention "Genius", even though it just recommends things for purchase - usually with several items already in your library.
04/15/09
04/15/09
04/15/09
04/15/09
04/15/09
04/15/09
03/25/09
03/25/09
03/25/09
03/25/09
So long, dicks!
I'm content with finding and setting up my own content on my own server, so screw yas.
03/25/09
03/25/09
01/21/09
01/21/09
01/21/09
01/21/09
01/21/09
While I can't argue how popular Pandora is, I've never had a good experience with it: I suggest an artist, it plays a couple of songs by that artist, then it spirals into moronland and starts throwing completely inappropriate music at me based on weird crap it made up about sonic characteristics of the music. I minored in music with a year of theory and can't say I ever heard of the rationalizations Pandora uses for its awful choices.
I can't say Slacker's perfect either. But it shows me the list of bands it thinks are appropriate for an artist-based station and lets me customize to my heart's content. The ads are roughly hourly and amount to a brief ID, akin to the call letter sting you hear on a broadcast radio station at the top of the hour. And the portable means I don't have to have a persistent connection to listen for hours and hours.
So Pandora's got some catching up to do. Let's hope competition makes everything better.
01/21/09
01/21/09
It is a great service, and whatever they have to do to keep it going sounds good to me.