Usually, when I do an Audio Addiction its for a specific album, but I’m bending my own rules a little bit and doing “double disc” AA this time around. I got the three most recent Kings of Leon CDs this past Christmas, and I’ve been slightly obsessed with two of them ever since. Not to say that I dislike Aha Shake, Heartbreak, but it hasn’t worked its way into my blood like crack in the same way that Only by the Night and Because of the Times have.
Apparently this has been around for a while and I just didn’t know about it, but if you’re in to music and you like finding new stuff you should definitely check out Pandora Radio. Pandora Radio is an Internets radio station created by the Music Genome Project, where they’ve identified some 400 characteristics to describe music at its most basic level, and use a really complex algorithm to group songs and artists together.
The beauty of Pandora, in my limited use so far, is that you just punch in the name of a song or artist that has the kind of music you’re in the mood to listen to and it will use its magic to play songs that fit right in with that mood. So far my experience has been that its extremely accurate in the selections that it makes for you to listen to.
By creating a profile for free, Pandora will also remember the stations you’ve created based on your song or artist searches so that you can cue a past request right up when you get back to the page. I don’t know how many different stations you can have. I only have three at this point, but I would have to assume that it would be quite a few more than that.
There are a couple of limitations in functionality that people will probably dislike, but they’re understandable given licensing rules Pandora has to deal with from the the publishing companies. You can’t hear any song you want at any time. You do get a limited number of song skips per hour and you can sample pretty much everything they have, but you don’t get on demand songs. The record companies just won’t let that happen. So if you want to hear a specific song immediately, try your luck at YouTube.
My only other complaint that I have at this point is that some of the technical stuff doesn’t seem to want to play nice with Chrome. Some of the layout/CSS stuff doesn’t seem to want to agree with Chrome. Also, you have the ability to get more information about whatever artist is playing at the moment or additional information about the song your listening to. The problem comes in that the site provides this information in a pop-up, which Chrome blocks everytime, forcing me go through my pop-up blocker to get to the additional information I want to read. Not a huge deal, but kind of annoying.
Like I said before, if you’re looking to hear a specific song right away, this isn’t the place for you, but if you want to listen to the kind of music you want to hear, and maybe find a new artist or two along the way, Pandora is a great place to do that. Without a doubt, its an improvement on crappy radio stations that play the same songs over and over and make you sit through commercials all the time.
I’m totally stealing this idea from TJ (I hope he doesn’t mind), but I finally had a good shuffle that wasn’t interrupted by a law lecture or encore break from one of the PJ concerts I have on CD so I wanted to throw it out there.
Basically, on a “Shuffle Friday” he takes his iPod, hits the shuffle songs option and lists the first five that come up, sometimes with a few comments on the song or artist. Often his regular readers will do likewise and share their shuffles in the comments. I always thought it was an interesting way to see what other people listen to and chance to discover artists you may have never heard before.
So without further ado, here’s my shuffle.
1. World Wide Suicide – Pearl Jam (Pearl Jam): One of the singles off their most recent album. Social commentary on the war in Iraq with some great lyrics.
2. Forgive Me – Missy Higgins (On a Clear Night): Great singer/songwriter from Australia. Puts on a good show too.
3. Comatose – Pearl Jam (Verizon Center Concert): Another one off of the self-titled album. This is their performance from their show here in DC in 2005.
4. Goodnight My Friend – Vertical Horizon (Running on Ice): From the earlier mellow days of VH. This isn’t one of my favorite songs of theirs, but I could have done worse.
5. Soma – Smashing Pumpkins (Siamese Dream): Some of that 90′s rock that I love so much. One of the lesser known tracks from Siamese Dream, which I “rediscovered” not too long ago and have been really enjoying again.
So that’s it. If you have the urge, shuffle your iPod and tell me what you come up with.
So I’ll start by stating that by no means am I old. I’m sure people will laugh at the title as I let you know that I’m still in my early thirties. The purpose isn’t to reflect on aches and pains never experienced before, I think the purpose of this post is more a reflection on moments you have in your day-to-day life where you stop and say, “wow…I’m getting old.”
A few examples…
A particularly curious one for me was not too long after graduating from college I was watching the news when a story grabbed my attention. Not for the content of the story, but for the description of the person involved. To quote the newscaster, “A 20 year old man…” and that was it. I being 24 at the time realized, “Holy crap…if they were talking about me on the news, they would call me a man. I’m not a man… I’m a stupid kid just out of college still trying to figure out what the heck to do next!”
A more recent change for me that I’m baffled by has been my recent change in leisure listening habits. Now normally this would have been referred to as a change in my music preferences, but that’s just the problem. I find myself not listening to music anymore. I’ve become a talk radio/podcast junkie. Anytime I get in the car, I look for NPR news or sports talk radio. During the week I ride the bus so I subscribe to about a half dozen different podcasts to keep me entertained. Gone are the days of goings to concerts all summer long or rushing out to buy a new album on release day – unless it’s PJ of course. Nope, I’m good with “NPR’s Fresh Air” or the “How Stuff Works.com” podcasts.
So I haven’t really had any of those “wow I sound like my parents” moments, but that’s most likely b/c I don’t have any kids. My question to the two readers we have (we may even have three now) is this:
What moments have made you stop in your tracks and ask, “what the heck was that!?!” Leave your thoughts in the comments.