Don't get the hype about Pandora

It seems like almost everyone I know now is using Pandora radio, whether on their home computer or their phone. I fail to see what's so special about Pandora. "Oh, Pandora plays songs you might not have heard before!" Well, so do Last.fm and Slacker Radio. I personally use Last.fm because it has a couple features Pandora and Slacker don't have. Last.fm allows you to connect with your friends and share music between profiles. My favorite thing about Last.fm is that there is NO SKIP LIMIT. I will never be able to use Pandora or Slacker as long as they keep their absurd six skipped songs per hour limit. If the program does a crappy job choosing a song for me, I'm doubly screwed by being stuck listening to something I don't want to listen to? No thanks; Last.fm for me. Another thing I really like about Last.fm is that there is a desktop app that "scrobbles" songs from your iPod. Here's how it works...when you sync your iPod, Last.fm's app will add the listening statistics of what you listened to since your last sync to Last.fm's system in your user profile. It keeps your "listening totals" updated. Last.fm uses the music you already listen to, in addition to the bands you ask it to emulate, to figure out which bands you might like. There is also a "neighborhood mode" where you can listen to a station made up of songs that people who listen to songs you listen to play on their Last.fm profiles. It's very intuititve. Pandora's "smart" system inevitably ended up giving me songs by bands I didn't like, and though Last.fm isn't perfect, there's no limit to the number of times I can skip a song I'm not a fan of.

If you still don't like Last.fm, then I still don't get why Pandora is so widely used as opposed to Slacker Radio. Slacker has FOUR TIMES the number of songs Pandora has, and allows you to determine how closely you want the music that is played for you to mirror what you've asked it to emulate; for example, if you pick Aerosmith, you can say you want it to pick bands JUST like Aerosmith, fairly similar to Aerosmith, or barely like Aerosmith. You can also tell it to replay songs you mark as favorites MORE often, LESS often, or barely ever.

Anyway, I just don't see the hype about Pandora. Want to defend it? Tell me why you use Pandora over these two. If you haven't tried Last.fm or Slacker Radio, I don't really want to hear why Pandora's better since you haven't given anything else a shot. Widen your horizons.



Yesterday was Derek's bachelor party at the A's game, and it was AWESOME. We left the house around 12:30, got some Taco Bell, and headed down to Oakland. When we got there we set up the grill and barbecued some burgers and hot dogs while everyone drank beer or soda and just hung out. We even gave a burger to the parking lot attendant, who said he'd never been offered tailgating food before. Derek busted out his heckling skills at Orioles left fielder Felix Pie ("pee-AY"), calling him about 30 different varieties of pies (blueberry pie, cherry pie, chicken pot pie, etc.) before Pie left the game after fouling a ball off his face. We also got to make fun of the most whipped person in the universe...no sitting on laps at the ballpark, and DEFINITELY no Jordin Sparks posters!!!!!



In case you can't read it, the poster says "Jordin Sparks, you're my Idol". Wow. Just wow. Yes, there was a stupid concert after the game, but it is a BALLPARK. Lame.

I've yet to receive a blog comment, so let's see who gets to be FIRST!

Brad