Pandora/Squeezebox

[Dusty Chalk]

Have any of you discovered Pandora yet?

http://www.pandora.com/

Pretty cool way of being introduced to new music -- I have several "stations" set up already (Ambient Electronica, Organica, Eccentrica, eMetal, and Electro Industrial). If you are on, and/or you don't mind me giving them your email address (I.E. if you are going to sign on anyway), then let me know (PM me your E), and I'll "share" them with you.

And apparently, there's some sort of sharing of information going on with the Slimdevices Squeezebox, so if you have one of these, you can listen anywhere and all of the other functionality (and you will want to be able to rate and skip songs, &c.), not just from your computer. There are certainly some missteps going on, and you will want to either filter songs out of your future potential playlist, or at least skip them, or tell them that you don't want to hear a certain track for the next month.

http://www.slimdevices.com/dev_pandora.html

I've been listening a lot lately to my "ambient electronica" station at work, and there's some cool mellow instrumental stuff on there. I started out by making a "Pete Namlook Radio" station, then added Klaus Schulze, Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom, and Bill Laswell (I'm not sure how much Bill Laswell fits in with the rest, but the overall station has a somewhat dubby feel to it, meaning every once in a while, a song will play with some dubbiness to it, but then otherwise it's mostly beatless), then finally renamed the station. I just remembered to add Tangerine Dream, and they're surprisingly less ambient than the rest of the material. As tracks play, I can tell them I love it, hate it, am tired of it, to skip it, or nothing (just let it play, but not affect the rating system).

I already like this better than Last.FM, where I could only have one artist influence a radio station. I really wanted a Klaus Schulze/Pete Namlook station, but there wasn't one (for some reason, "Pete Namlook & Klaus Schulze" were both on the "artists like" lists of both artists individually, but neither one individually was in the list for the other...I.E. "Pete Namlook" wasn't in the list for "Klaus Schulze", and vice versa).

Now, the only thing that worries me is whether or not my listening habits on one station will affect their choices of songs on another -- anyone know? I kind of hope not, because sometimes I'm in different moods. I've almost exclusively listened to the ambient electronica and they're doing really well here. They've played a couple of Robert Rich tracks, and I remembered that I really like Robert Rich, so I added him. Now I'm going to go and add vidna Obmana (and maybe Fear Falls Burning).

Eccentrica: Legendary Pink Dots, Nurse With Wound, Current 93, Coil, Can, Halou. Yeah, I don't know, it's a start. They played some Bjork, and that was perfect, so I added her to the list.

eMetal: bunch of Ministry songs (I didn't want them to accidentally pick up on the synthpoppiness of With Sympathy, or the more trad non-guitar industrial nature of Twitch -- there's no way to add whole albums, otherwise I would've just done Land..., Mind... & ...Didn't Feel Like Showing Up Live..., so I just did "Breathe", "Thieves", "So What" and so on), Collide, Curve, Garbage, Nine Inch Nails, Lennon, Plumb, Godhead, God Lives Underwater, Gravity Kills, and Stabbing Westward. Yeah, I know, most of those are more "hard pop" than metal per se, but I can always rename the station later. It's what I like. Now if I could only make a CD of tracks for the car...

Electro Industrial: Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly -- any other ideas? I tried to put Young Gods in, but they couldn't find it. Haven't listened to this station yet.

Organica: Chris Isaak, Black Heart Procession, Calexico and Lhasa. They introduced me to this new guy I'd never heard of before, named Jay Munly, and I liked him immediately, so I added him to the list. I can always take him out later.

I need a synthpop station. And a classical music station. And...nah...I better listen to more than one station at a time before I start playing around much more.

[thrice]

Ok so I just logged into it (didn't create an account yet, but that's awesome...I'll definietely explore this at work. Thanks for the heads-up

[tkam]

Yeah pandora is pretty sweet, I wonder how well it works with squeezebox. I'll have to get one and try it out I guess

[thrice]

Yep...I hear ya....and the transporter is tempting. I can't wait to hear one. If it's just as good as a traditional CD player...:

[Dusty Chalk]

I've shared out all my stations. Below are links directly to the stations.

Organica

Electro Industrial -- this one is still pretty raw, if anyone has suggestions on whom to add, I'm all ears.

eMetal

Eccentrica -- added Tweaker, David Sylvian, and a few others, not sure that was the right direction to go (seems to have made it a bit more mellow), may redirect later.

Ambient Electronica

This is the best thing since sliced bread. I'm in love. The thing played three whole tracks (out of four) from the Delia Gonzalez/Gavin Russom album, each of which is on the order of 16 minutes. Not in one sitting, but just the fact that it's capable of doing so speaks volumes for whatever licensing scheme they came up with.

Oh, and I found out you do need a subscription (to Pandora) for this to work with the Squeezebox.

So now a Squeezebox and a Pandora subscription are in my future. I just have to wait until Hirsch gets his Transporter to find out if it's worth the extra dosh, or if I will be happy with the Squeezebox.

[Dusty Chalk]

I love Pandora. Right now, it's playing Brian Eno's "Discreet Music". Yes, the entire track.

Has anyone else tried this, yet? I know Ken has...having trouble figuring it out? Anyone want me to set up a station just for them? Just name a couple artists, and I will...

And yes, an Opeth/Mannheim Steamroller station is in the works. I'm just trying to figure out why it keeps playing Metallica...?