Barts News

I never was too much into listening to the radio. All those so-called DJs who thought they were funny, all these commercials cutting into the music, the fact that if I ever heard any original tune noone would tell its title - all that stuff strongly discouraged me from ever trying to listen to it. Maybe that's why I was so effective at work and while studying?

As for the internet radios, I somehow didn't really feel the need to listen to them either. However, I started working in open space environment and sometimes one simply has to create a sound boundary between him and the rest of the crowd. A friend recommended Pandora to me, advertising its ability to chose the music I like.

After trying it, I have fallen totally in love with it. The process is simple - you create a station based on your favourite song (or group) and Pandora then suggests the following songs that are similar to the initial selection. You can then bookmark favourite songs, rate them as bad (thumbs down) or as preferred (thumbs up). These choices will narrow down the attributes of the songs you like, so that the radio station will become shaped more and more into your taste.


At the beginning I was a little skeptic. I started with Rammstein, one of my favourites. Then, after a couple of songs, Pandora suggested Rob Zombie, then Megaherz, then KMFDM. Since these are the bands that also were on my hard drive in the folders right next to each other, I was astonished that Pandora would be able to chose so well.

The only downside to people from outside of the States is that this service is available to US residents. But since the check is based solely on the postal code number, you can always get a little creative with it. I use my company's postal code (as our headquarters are located in United States).

Thanks to Pandora I have found some music gems that I wouldn't otherwise ever come in contact with. I provide you the little excerpt from my list of bookmarked titles. If you click on the images below you will get to the pages with the backstage information about the song, artist and where you can listen to the sample of it that song (which I thoroughly recommend, if you want to get a glimpse of my musical taste).

As a post scriptum, I'll only note that Pandora is not perfect. There are cases when it suggests music totally different from the station profile, there are occasional hiccups when listening (rarely, but sometimes they happen), I also spotted a couple of bugs in their vast databases (see the image below for example), which I immediately submitted (their time of reaction and customer service is incredible, by the way).


Still, it is the best internet radio for me and I stand by this opinion. Oh, I'd almost forget - it's totally free!