Pandora
I've been switching between Slacker Radio and Sirius XM Radio Online for music at work and at home. Sometimes I feel like keeping XM Radio because it has new channels I can listen in my car and a channel with songs I generally like to listen to. However, one look at xmfan.com today changed my mind, as there were new fees introduced that would affect me if I were to continue my subscription once it expires.
Slacker Radio has its up and downs, the up being the ability to pause at any time if I am interrupted in my listening, which is very nice. And custom stations are good too, but I feel that some of the songs are lacking (or they have remixes of songs that I don't like as much as the original).
So I looked for other alternatives today, and I found Pandora Radio. It's very cool because it uses "musical genomes" to choose songs similar in "genes" to what a user has indicated or favorited. I can't believe I hadn't discovered this cool service until now. Although they may not last long depending on progress with licensing and royalties. Still, it's choosing songs that I'm liking so far, which is great. (In Slacker, there's some automatic playlist selection also, but its heuristics are obviously not as great - there were songs that didn't belong in the current "genre" that still got played. ^^;; )
Slacker Radio has its up and downs, the up being the ability to pause at any time if I am interrupted in my listening, which is very nice. And custom stations are good too, but I feel that some of the songs are lacking (or they have remixes of songs that I don't like as much as the original).
So I looked for other alternatives today, and I found Pandora Radio. It's very cool because it uses "musical genomes" to choose songs similar in "genes" to what a user has indicated or favorited. I can't believe I hadn't discovered this cool service until now. Although they may not last long depending on progress with licensing and royalties. Still, it's choosing songs that I'm liking so far, which is great. (In Slacker, there's some automatic playlist selection also, but its heuristics are obviously not as great - there were songs that didn't belong in the current "genre" that still got played. ^^;; )