I can’t remember how I heard about Pandora. But it’s another music recommendation website. Rather than being based on a large collection of other people’s preferred music and listening patterns, it is based on some (supposedly) objective assessment of the music itself. You can create radio stations based on certain types of music that you like, and it will play music for you that it thinks is similar.

Things I like:
The interface is better than last.fm; there’s no outside module, it’s all right there in the webpage. I am hardly ever even aware that it is streaming music. There are never any glitches.

Things I don’t like:
The recommendations don’t seem that reliable. While based on an interesting idea (Music Genome Project) and I’m sure they put a lot of work into it, it just doesn’t seem to pan out all of the time. Sure, we found some new jazz vocalists that we like (Sarah Gazarek). But on my U2 station I rountinely get Pantera, Guns and Roses, Nazareth, and other heavy metal bands. Maybe they just didn’t put enough thought into that genre of rock. But U2 is NOT heavy metal. It does not seem to take the artists’s motivation or themes into account… except there is a parameter for “romantic lyrics”. I think that an important aspect of Ani DiFranco is that her music is about women, for example.

Also: They don’t play enough of the music I said I like. ... Ok, I know I’m supposed to be finding new music based on the music I said I liked, and they want me to find new stuff so I will buy it from their affiliates. But sometimes I just want to listen to music that I like!

And I like being able to browse other people’s profiles, as in last.fm. I can really get a sense for myself what kind of music they like, and judge any unfamiliar music that way.