Pandora is a free, streaming online radio where you can set up your own “stations” to listen to. I haven’t used it too much, but it’s a very interesting idea – who hasn’t wanted to change the playlist for a radio station at one time or another?
You start out by creating a station based on a particular artist or song that you like, then as you listen to your station you can give each song a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down to customize the music that gets played. Songs that you dislike won’t be played again, while songs that you like will be played more often. The music your station plays will also change based on the musical attributes of songs that you like, such as heavy metal guitars and screaming vocalists, or soft piano pieces in a minor key.
This seems like a pretty useful tool for finding music that you like, as after listening for only a few minutes I’d already found a few new artists that I like but had never heard of. The main downside is that the number of songs you may skip per hour is limited, but as long as you start with a song or artist that you really like then it shouldn’t be too big of a problem. Their licensing prevents you from listening to the same song more than once every few hours, which is already an improvement over public radio.