Pandora's Box of Groovesharks

At some point when working at Liquid, I started listening to music nearly every day. Partly because everything at Liquid was open (ie no cubicles), so occasionally I needed a way to shut out everything else so I could focus on work. Partly because I saw the lead programmer listening to music, so I figured it must be okay. The IT guys had specifically said no internet radio streaming was allowed, so I had to rely on what music I had or what a co-worker was sharing.

Listening to the same songs day and and day out got kind of tiring, so for the first time in a long time, my CD collection started growing. I've never really been into the music scene, so I never know who I would like. I'd listen to the radio on the way to work and could sing along with songs, but have absolutely no idea who sang the song (still true). So I'd have to trust recommendations from peers (which brought me such wonders as Gaelic Storm and the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack) or hope to find something good through the websites I check (which brought me The OneUps).

Then when I started working at NPS, I discovered we had free reign to stream whatever we wanted to at work (hooray for the government and their large bandwidth!). At some point at Liquid, someone told me about a website called Pandora. This is exactly the sort of thing I had been looking for. You give it a song or artist that you like and it will create a radio station for you based on that style. What this means is that you will occasionally hear songs from the artist you told (or the actual song the station is based on), but mostly you hear other artists playing similar styles. For example, today I wanted to hear some good banjo music, so I created a radio station based on Foggy Mountain Breakdown. Hoo boy did I hear a lot of great bluegrass all day! Other radio stations that have been incredibly successful include The Fray, Gaelic Storm, Nobuo Uematsu, The Insyderz, and Squirrel Nut Zippers. If you want to see my whole list, you can add me as a friend on it with my junkmail e-mail address (first initial last name AT hotmail DOT com).

The one downside of Pandora is that if you really like a particular song and want to hear it again, you have to wait until it decides to play it again (which it will relatively often if you give it a thumbs up on that song). Apparently this is due to how they license their music. You also can't skip too many songs or play the exact song you want. For this, there is the other good music site, Grooveshark. Grooveshark lets you search for an artist, album, song, genre, playlist, or people and play the exact song you want to hear at that moment.

My experience with Grooveshark has not been that great however. I don't think I've heard a completely uninterrupted song (ie it can't stream the song fast enough) and that's assuming I actually found the song I'm looking for. Granted, I've been searching for some newer (and thus less known) names, so it's fairly likely they won't be on this site yet.

So if you find yourself in need of music at a computer and have the ability to stream music, I would recommend Grooveshark (if you know what you want) and Pandora (if you don't). Happy listening!