Thing 19: Explore a site from the Web 2.0 Awards: Pandora

I took a look at the very long list of Web 2.0 winners and some of the music sites naturally caught my eye. Pandora is an excellent music site that allows you to basically create a number of "radio stations" based on your own preferences. You simply type in an artist or song title and Pandora will return you with a radio station based on that song or artist. You can then tell it if you like or dislike a particular song it has chosen and it will adjust the station accordingly.

I think of this as being like "listeners' advisory." It allows you to type in something you like and in return Pandora exposes you to other artists you might also like. Pandora and other Internet radio stations have been in a battle with record companies over royalty payments and internet radio is in jeopardy of going under which I think is unfortunate. To me music and the arts are just as important as books and reading and so this site is great at exposing users to new artists and genres of music. It's incredibly easy to use and I've used it to create radio stations to listen to during dinner or when hosting a get-together.