Niftiest thing I’ve seen in a bit
Pandora free internet radio. Never thought much about internet radio because I don’t usually listen to music while at a computer. But Pandora has an application for my Blackberry. And I have one of those wireless transmitters for the car stereo. So, I can listen to personalized, commercial free radio in my car. I’m still trying to figure out how they make money, though.
July 29th, 2009 at 10:04 am
At this moment, they do not make money. They pay something like 8 cents per song royalty. They’re supposedly going to start charging $.99 a month if you go over 40 hours, which I still don’t see how they’ll make money, but I’ll pay that happily.
I use Pandora on my iPhone for streaming tunes all day long.
July 29th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Ms RedDog uses it on her Palm Pre
July 29th, 2009 at 11:48 am
How do they make money at such a low, low price?!!
VOLUME!
July 29th, 2009 at 11:49 am
I would apologize, but the pun was truly irresistible. Along with atrocious.
July 29th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I’d imagine there will come a day when the data they’ve collected is very valuable to somebody.
Also, I could swear they have some kind of ad system in there. You very rarely hear them though.
July 29th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I hit the 40 hour limit early last week. Along with the normal on-the-page-ads, they do have commercials. They usually only play when you switch stations, or sometimes I think after you thumbs-down a song.
I didn’t pay the 99 cents. I’ve found that after awhile, the stations just play the same songs over and over.
July 29th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Rob K, Pandora doesn’t have the same variety as Last.FM, but the iPhone software is better and easier to use, plus you can PAUSE, which is a big factor.
I mostly listen to music that sounds the same anyway…
July 29th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
I tried Pandora and Last.FM but found Slacker to be *way* better.
There is a blackberry version that can cache stations so that you can listen when not online.
The free version allows up to 6 skips per station per hour, but when I would run out of skips, I would switch stations.
July 29th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Thought I was the only one who enjoyed Pandora. Good stuff and now it’s validated and “Uncle Approved”.
July 29th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
“I’ve found that after awhile, the stations just play the same songs over and over.”
Just like regular radio stations….
July 29th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
How well does that transmitter work? Others seem to have sub-par performance…
July 29th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
“…sub par performance…”
because they have to in order to be FCC approved
I have found that units that have a length of cable
between the power socket and transmitter tend to work better than those stuck down at the power socket
but none that I’ve listened through are something I would want to use with music
Though in this case we are streaming over the network at relatively low quality already….
July 30th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Alcibiades, it works well enough. A bit of a loss of quality rectified by turning the radio up a bit.
July 31st, 2009 at 1:39 pm
It does have commercials. Just a very few of them. I love Pandora and use it on my Palm Pre. If you listen long enough, a commercial will slip in occasionally.