There isn’t an easier way to get into customized, streaming radio than to fire up Pandora. You literally only have to type in the name of a song or band, and it’s off and running. You tell it what you like and don’t, and it gets better at playing stuff more like what you like.
Their FAQ does a nice job of getting most users started, but here’s what I’ve been able to figure out by using it a lot:
- You can create lots of stations, and you should. I’m into a ton of different genres, pretty much by mood, and so I have a few stations with my favorite two or three bands in that genre. This will help you discover more bands like those bands, and you can expand each station that way.
- A couple of my more genre-hopping favorite artists (Ween, Pixies, etc.) have really bad stations to start with. From what I can tell, it’s dividing the whole Ween songbook up, and finding similar songs to each, and playing those. The Pixies station pretty much plays a lot of acoustic-guitar-driven early-90s sounding crap, with some very weird oddball choices thrown in. I’ve had much better luck adding my three or four favorite songs for each artist, and then encouraging Pandora when it starts down the right path.
- The other thing the algorithm can’t figure out: attitude. Finding a hundred songs like “The Statue Got Me High” is fairly easy (punchy guitars, electric rock instrumentation, go). There’s no computer algorithm for “literary” or “clever”, so the closest you might get is Blind Melon. I try not to confuse it by getting too pushy with the button: if it’s way off, you’re probably better off tuning the original tracks or artists, not telling it “I hate this, I hate this, I hate this”. (It does have plenty of late-90s Default / Fuel / Nickelback in store for you, no matter what, so feel free to “no no no” that.)
- The first few stations I created were truly attempts at capturing every existing interest, passion or investment I’d ever made into music. There is, however, no reason you couldn’t start a station for a band you were only interested in finding out more about. I own no Pretenders, but there’s no receipt check at Pandora, so I said they were one of my favorite artists, and the station it put together is pretty nice.
- Don’t be afraid of the “why did you play this?” button: it explains a lot about the brilliant (and idiotic) algorithm behind everything.
- Oh, and rename all your stations. There’s nothing worse than setting up a station for Beloved Artist, having it called Beloved Artist Radio, and being reminded constantly that they are playing music you do not love as much as you love Beloved Artist.
