General Discussion

One thing I enjoy is good music, I normally listen to satellite music or Shout Cast  since I am sick of the radio playing the same songs over and over.  Anyways, lately I have been using Pandora www.pandora.com/ I have been using it for the past month all you have to do is type in your favorite artist(s) or song(s) and it will create a "station" that will play songs from that band and bands with similar play styles.  You can create up to 100 stations and even able to create a mix if you wish. 

As a music lover I thought it would only be a good thing to share this with other music lovers, it does require an email to create an account but so far I haven't been sent any spam mail and there is nothing to download.

I've actually been using Pandora since the beginning of the school year when I got this laptop, it's a nifty little device and I highly recommend it to anyone who doesn't want to pay for music downloads and wants to hear a particular style of music.

That's all fine and good as long as you live in the USA.  If you happen to live anywhere else you're screwed. There is some deal with copyrights or some crap that no longer lets anybody out here listen to it.  And it's all done by IP.  I could figure out some way to mask or re-rout but that's just way too much effort.

I've been using Last.fm. It's not as flexible as pandora but it kinda gets the job done.

I have been using Pandora for over an year and I can only reccomend it for everyone, I discovered a number of less known artists that are now among my favourites.

Too bad it is limited to US ip ranges, forced me to do a bit of a workaround, but I still love it, especially if I want to quickly start listening to something while in work, as I dont have to carry any music with me and the US restriction may as well be nonexistant (global corporate networks sometimes have some advantages).

cool after just a few 'selections' this station is already good.

edit: who would've thought that getting your user data tracked for selling you stuff would feel so good :S

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We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

We believe that you are in Sweden (your IP address appears to be xx.xxx.xxx.xx (forgot which numbers are set and which depend on your computer, damn)).

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While I understand that it may be so, it still sucks. I'm happy with my current music on my computer, but it's always good to look, or rather listen, around for some new bands and new music.

There are quite a few circumvention tools(haven't used them myself or have ever wanted to), internet tracking isn't an exact science. 

The agent pegged down my semi-unique music tastes in a couple of hours.

I have nothing but good things to say about Pandora, when I had access to it that is.  The selection of music I got was very good and like stated before it found artists that I've never heard before that are among my favorites.  I just found it a jarring experience when the suddenly cut me off for reasons that sound rather silly to me.