[EricP]

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the website in any way. They will allow you to use the service free of charge for 10 hours and then request $3 a month for continued use.

Basically it's a music matcher. You pick an artist, a song, an album, and it plays similar stuff. It's very thorough with the evaluation of your selection, and it has an incredible amount of data. I can't really describe it much more than this, but I'm finding a LOT of new music through it, and I'd highly suggest it to music lovers. It's streaming, so the music isn't spectacular quality, but it's showing me a lot of artists to go pick up.

 

[asmox]

1. http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=138217
2. it doesn't work all that well. it kept coming up with absurd recommendations for me.
3. Last.fm does it better, and is free.

 

[EricP]

I have heard that pandora was recently updated, that's why I posted it again. It seems to work much better now than it did in the past.

 

[asmox]

yikes.. i just tried searching for these artists -

Canvas Solaris
PsyOpus
Spastic Ink
Pain of Salvation
Behold... the Arctopus
Frantic Bleep
Kayo Dot
Ring of Fire
Coprofago
Soul Sirkus
Gordian Knot
Aghora
Secret Chiefs 3
Estradasphere
Upsilon Acrux
Bubblemath
Freak Kitchen
Linear Sphere
Tandjent
Bumblefoot
Redemption
Idiot Flesh
Watchtower

..and it did not recognize a single one.

i would have kept looking.. but honestly, once i saw that they did not have Watchtower in their database (how do you omit an artist that basically invented an entire genre?), i lost all desire to.

i'd say they need quite a bit more updating to do before being able to provide their service in full.

 

[blessingx]

Isn't 'progressive metal' a bit specific to be an 'entire genre'?

 

[asmox]

Quote:

Originally Posted by blessingx Isn't 'progressive metal' a bit specific to be an 'entire genre'?

sorta.. but i'm not attributing progressive metal to Watchtower. i was referring to tech-metal.

though they certainly did set the standard for many later day prog metal bands.

 

[K271 Guy]

5 stars

 

[blip]

Pandora is a suprisingly good system... I've seriously thought about joining it because it has a real talent for finding non-obvious suggestions that make sense. (I.e. if you type in Massive Attack in most of these programs you get some Portishead, some Tricky, some Moorcheba etc. but if you type it into Pandora you might get Isaac Hayes)

That said, their database can be a bit limited in terms of obscure music. I'm tempted to join, but honestly Last.Fm is less innovative but almost as enjoyable to listen to.

In other words, if you just want a radio station that adapts to your particular desires Last.FM is the way to go... if you want to expand your musical horizons in directions that may or may not interest you then Pandora is pretty cool. (Though you might want to consider just playing with it for the trial period

)

 

[K271 Guy]

yes the color scale is setable over serial in degrees C ... in this case I think I had the colors starting around 50C ... I would have to check my notes

 

[bobeau]

Quote:

Originally Posted by asmox Canvas Solaris ... Watchtower ..and it did not recognize a single one.

Nor did I.

It's good for folks like me who have a knowledge that just scratches the surface of indie/underground.

I think this is a good point though. Systems like this should interface with others (more homegrown ones) that delve into more obscure stuff. There's a lot of a ground to cover cataloging every song that's ever been published, and surely published music has an exponential growth rate with time. A homogenous system can only take it so far.

 

[K271 Guy]

XDDD Funny!

 

[enjoi_rootbeer]

resurected to inform you guys that pandora release a free version check it out...again!

 

[Beach123456]

Yeah, I used my free 10 hours already and they allowed me to register for free. Just put in an old email address or something so you don't actually have to deal with the ads they send you that come with the free version.
I find it works really well, as long as you pick the right band to make a station out of. Listening to Iron Maiden Radio right now on Pandora and it is doing a pretty good job of picking out similar music.

 

[rimsy]

I've just tried pandora and it looks rather promising. There's only one fault to it - I'm not a US resident so I'm afraid I can't register. Thanks for the tip though. I'll look into last.fm too. Nevertheless, I'm still grateful to radiobeat.cz for the most recent midnight album - Omega/10,000 Lepes (it was aired two days ago iirc). It surely has widened my horizons

.

 

[blip]

Hey cool stuff... I liked Pandora a lot but couldn't justify using it when Last.FM was almost as good and free.