Pandora

I love Pandora. It's basically become my main source of background noise during the day. Does anyone else need background noise to work? I can't get anything done when it's totally quiet. I'm really not sure why, but I'm so much more easily distracted when all I listen to all day is my fingers hitting the keyboard. So I have this pretty amazing television in here, a stereo that plays everything (including my iPod), and what do I do when I get into the office? I queue up pandora.com aka the music genome project. Basically, you create your own station by just typing in the name of an artist that you like, and the program automatically mixes that artist's music with the music of other artists that have a similar sound. You can create as many of these mini stations as you want, and then you can merge some of them, or all of them, together and just have a giant mix to play all day. The catch? You can't repeat songs and you can only skip a certain number of songs per hour, because of the agreements Pandora has with the artists. But it's a great alternative to all of the commercials they play on the radio, and I've also found some music that I really like that I wouldn't have found without the service. Best of all? It's free. I think you can even get it to stream to your car or home radio, so you don't have to listen to it on your computer. That part might not be free, I haven't looked into it at all. Today's playlist? I'm thinking about mixing Fergie and Breaking Benjamin with a little Yo-Yo Ma. Eclectic, yes, but it breaks up the day :)