Michael Giberson
We’ve raved about Pandora here a number of times (KP search for “Pandora”). The New York Times recently reported on the surprising fact of Pandora: unlike a lot of other internet music startups, it survived. In fact, lately the company has prospered and is talking about going public.
It turns out that the Pandora iPhone app (which I raved about here) was part of what has sealed Pandora’s success.
Michael Giberson
I haven’t been much of a radio music fan since, I don’t know, high school. I liked music that wasn’t played much by the local radio stations and in general the signal-to-noise ratio on most radio stations was too small. Cassette tapes, then CDs were part of the answer, but that cuts off access to new tunes.
Fast forward to the present. Lubbock radio is mostly not too interesting for me. Classic Rock. Pop. Pop Rock. Country. Latin. One “alternative” station with a weak signal but wide-ranging playlist, and usually my choice in the car. (Too be fair, Washington DC music radio wasn’t too interesting, either, after the demise of WHFS other than the occasional jazz programs and Texas Fred’s Zydeco show on WPFW.)
Now there is a new option. Pandora is one of my favorite online music services. Recently picked up an iPhone. More recently added the Pandora iPhone app. Just discovered that the adapter my wife has to connect her iPod to the car radio also works fine with my iPhone.
I can run Pandora in my car. If you have Pandora and a compatible phone and a way to link to your car radio, so can you.
Fantastic. And when I get to my destination I can pop the iPhone out of the adapter, insert headphone jack, and keep the music rolling.
How about little Snooks Eaglin radio to celebrate?
Michael Giberson
It is late on a Friday, and I want to go to sleep. But I had Pandora on in the background while I worked on the computer, and now that I’m stopping work, I want to keep listening to the music.
It has been a long long time since over-the-air radio has kept me awake at night, wanting to hear what was next.
Tonight this is why I love Pandora: Pixies Radio.
Michael Giberson
Reading and writing about Jeremy Rifkind’s distributed energy proposal has been made much easier for me this morning because I’ve had Pandora running music in the background.
More specifically, Pandora has been playing my “A message to you Rudy” station, and by clicking here you can listen, too. It has been a beautiful mix of The Specials, The Toasters, Gregory Isaacs, The Ethiopians, The Melodians, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Burning Spear and others.
One neat feature in Pandora, currently not available in traditional, over-the-air radio, is you can click on the artists name (or song name, or album name) and learn more. For example, I did not know that Rob Hingley started up The Toasters by gathering “several employees at the comic-book store he managed to form the band’s first incarnation.”
Here are two YouTube videos of the song that inspired the station – The Specials, “A message to you Rudy” – both interesting documents of the era and scene yeilding two tone ska some thirty years ago.
BTW, during the four days I spent at JazzFest I received more comments on my The Toasters t-shirt (4), than on my Bob Wills Day shirt (1), or my Los Lobos shirt (0), or my The Slackers shirt (0).
