Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulett,
Speaker 1: and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com. Sitting across from me, as he always does,
Speaker 1: is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: why don't we just go ahead, get the formalities out
Speaker 1: of the way and start this off with a little
Speaker 1: listener mail. This listener mail comes from Justin. He says, Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm fourteen and love the show. Don't worry, I'm making
Speaker 1: sure this isn't long like some of your others. So
Speaker 1: how does Pandora Internet radio work like with the amount
Speaker 1: of skips and stuff? Thanks for the show, it's awesome, Justin, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Justin. We decided we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: Pandora Radio and the underlying structure behind it, the Music
Speaker 1: Genome Project, because it's pretty cool. Yeah, the Music Genome
Speaker 1: Project is pretty key to this whole thing. Um. Because
Speaker 1: there are a number of different kinds of internet radio
Speaker 1: stations out there. Pandora is just one of them. Uh,
Speaker 1: some of the other's famous ones that people are probably
Speaker 1: pretty familiar with. Our last dot FM or group, shark
Speaker 1: Um Radio one Lama maybe that one is not familiar
Speaker 1: to me, Fine Tune, and of course Spotify, which we
Speaker 1: have yet to see in the United States. And then
Speaker 1: there's some others that are not internet radio stations but
Speaker 1: also will deliver music to you via the web, things
Speaker 1: like La La oh wait, that's gone well La La
Speaker 1: went bye bye and went to La La Land. I
Speaker 1: went to apple Land is what I went to. Well,
Speaker 1: that's true at any rate, So internet radio. The interesting
Speaker 1: thing about Pandora is that it kind of sprung out
Speaker 1: of the idea of how do you find new music
Speaker 1: that you're going to like? You know, not just not
Speaker 1: just finding new music, because that's that in itself is
Speaker 1: not necessarily that hard, but finding new music that kind
Speaker 1: of appeals to you based upon what you already like.
Speaker 1: That can be kind of a challenge. I mean, you
Speaker 1: walk into a music store and you look at the
Speaker 1: categories and they're pretty broad, right, like rock or rap
Speaker 1: or blues or whatever. That's These genres are huge, I mean,
Speaker 1: they're there are sub genres in every single one of these. Yes,
Speaker 1: And just because you happen to like someone who has
Speaker 1: a great record in one genre doesn't mean that you're
Speaker 1: going to pick up any other record in that genre
Speaker 1: and be equally as enamored. So Pandora Radio kind of
Speaker 1: grew out of this idea of the Music Genome Project,
Speaker 1: which uh uh is fascinating to me. The idea is
Speaker 1: that analysts break down a song by describing it through
Speaker 1: one of several hundred musical attributes, and the collection of
Speaker 1: attributes are kind of what give the song it's character,
Speaker 1: and that by breaking down other songs and getting their attributes,
Speaker 1: you can compare one against the other and see how
Speaker 1: similar they are, Like how many of the qualities does
Speaker 1: one song share with another? And if there are several
Speaker 1: qualities that are shared, you could leap to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that hey, you know, if you really like, if you
Speaker 1: really dig this one song, then this other song that's
Speaker 1: kind of similar to it, you'll probably also like. There's
Speaker 1: a good chance. So uh, that's kind of how Pandora
Speaker 1: that's the basis of Pandora Radio. Yeah, I can actually
Speaker 1: get pretty messy these uh. The songs are are picked
Speaker 1: apart by essentially by hand. Um, so of course there
Speaker 1: is a human being sitting somewhere in a room full
Speaker 1: of little bits of music all over the floor, or
Speaker 1: maybe not now. Um. It does take human beings, however,
Speaker 1: to uh who are working at Pandora to listen to
Speaker 1: a song and and basically they're they're dissecting it. They're
Speaker 1: listening to it for different things, UM, different styles of music.
Speaker 1: They're listening for the different instrumentation. Perhaps you like piano jazz,
Speaker 1: but you you can't stand saxophones, so I mean you can.
Speaker 1: They're identifying traits like that, Um, different kinds of of singing, vocalization,
Speaker 1: maybe all instrumentals. These are all kinds of of attributes
Speaker 1: or uh facets as they like to describe them in
Speaker 1: library school, Um, of a song that they'll use to
Speaker 1: record and Um. Once you get started with Pandora, simply
Speaker 1: by putting in, say a favorite artist or a favorite song. UM,
Speaker 1: that's really when the music genome project kicks in, because
Speaker 1: you know, it's going to try to play another song
Speaker 1: in your station based on the traits that are available
Speaker 1: for that particular song or that particular artist that you
Speaker 1: put in. Sure. Yeah, So for example, if I wanted
Speaker 1: to put in um uh say the Ramones, and I did, uh,
Speaker 1: I want to be sedated? Okay, because you know I'm
Speaker 1: a punk rock fan. Yes you are, so if I
Speaker 1: put that in, it would the Pandora Radio would would
Speaker 1: consult the Genome project essentially the database, and say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: this guy wants he likes I want to be sedated.
Speaker 1: What qualities does that song have? You know, what kind
Speaker 1: of rhythm does it follow? Is it a male vocalist
Speaker 1: or a female vocalist? Of course in this case it's
Speaker 1: a male vocalist. Um is it a band? Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it acoustic? Is it rock? It looks at all
Speaker 1: these different qualities and then says, all right, well, what
Speaker 1: else is in the library that kind of has this
Speaker 1: similar uh structure? And it might pull something from the
Speaker 1: clash and then play the clash and say, hey, do
Speaker 1: you like this? And then it's your choice to either
Speaker 1: give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down or
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have to do anything at all
Speaker 1: if you don't want to. If you do a thumbs up, generally,
Speaker 1: what that's telling Pandora is that not only do you
Speaker 1: like the song, but it will start to play that
Speaker 1: heavier in rotations in the future. Now. Granted, when you
Speaker 1: first get started, it's not going to do that that
Speaker 1: often because you haven't built up your own station yet.
Speaker 1: But over time, as you thumb up or thumbdown songs, UH,
Speaker 1: certain songs will get played more often than others. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the nice things about Pandora is that you're
Speaker 1: not limited to a particular station. So, say you have
Speaker 1: a remoone station, but you say, you know what today,
Speaker 1: I'm I really want to you know, I'm thinking back
Speaker 1: to the days when I was in high school band.
Speaker 1: I really want to listen to something symphonic. Well, you can.
Speaker 1: You can put in a favorite UH composer, say Aaron Copeland,
Speaker 1: or maybe you want to listen to music from the
Speaker 1: romantic period, you can put that in. You don't have
Speaker 1: to put your you don't have to throw away what
Speaker 1: you've done on your remone station. You can actually create
Speaker 1: up to a hundred stations of your own. So if
Speaker 1: you have your you know, rainy day station for a
Speaker 1: mood music while you're working, or you really want something
Speaker 1: UH like industrial or hip hop, you can go ahead
Speaker 1: and switch from one to the other. And if you
Speaker 1: really want to you can mix some of them together
Speaker 1: in their quick Mix feature, which is a fairly new
Speaker 1: feature on the site. Has been around for probably more
Speaker 1: than a year now now that I think about it,
Speaker 1: um but it was there when it started. And it's
Speaker 1: an opportunity to mash up different stations, so you can
Speaker 1: uh combine different different stations that you've already set up
Speaker 1: and it will give you a mix. So you really
Speaker 1: have a lot of options as far as customizing, and
Speaker 1: it's not it's going to keep in mind what your
Speaker 1: preferences are for a particular station, So you're starting with
Speaker 1: a blank slate each time. Yeah, but you have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to customize and and if you want to, you
Speaker 1: can change uh your station around too, because you can
Speaker 1: edit the page for that station and if you say,
Speaker 1: come a song down that you didn't mean to, you
Speaker 1: can go, oh geez and go back to edit your page.
Speaker 1: You have to say, oh gees. By the way, that's
Speaker 1: that's part of you wouldn't have thought. So yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: we're just going to go ahead and do that email us,
Speaker 1: but no, you can go back and edit it and say,
Speaker 1: you know, and check this one, I actually like this
Speaker 1: and um, so it's pretty nice that you can you
Speaker 1: can customize this and you don't have This is what
Speaker 1: sets Pandora apart from a lot of the other um
Speaker 1: Internet ready stations is you have this customized ability to
Speaker 1: really make the station yours. Yeah, and and beyond that,
Speaker 1: just to kind of build on what you were saying,
Speaker 1: they're put uh, it has a couple of other options
Speaker 1: that are kind of cool to One of which is
Speaker 1: that let's say that you have maybe a dozen radio
Speaker 1: stations that you've created, and you've got them in different
Speaker 1: genres or just uh, you know, kind of for different moods,
Speaker 1: and say that you have one station open and a
Speaker 1: song starts playing, and you think, I like this song,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really belong in the station. It really
Speaker 1: could go in my other station, like you know, station
Speaker 1: number three. You can actually go through the menu system
Speaker 1: and port that song over into your other station. So
Speaker 1: that way, what it does is it automatically gives that
Speaker 1: song that thumbs down for the station it's currently playing in,
Speaker 1: so it won't play it again there, but it will
Speaker 1: play in your in whatever station you designated as the recipient,
Speaker 1: which is really neat because I mean, I have that
Speaker 1: happen all the time. I've one of the stations I
Speaker 1: have is for musicals, uh hardcore punk rock rock. Okay,
Speaker 1: I like musicals actually, Frankly, he has stations for both.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I do have stations for both. I
Speaker 1: have a station called I Want to be Sedated. I
Speaker 1: have a station called Broadway. I have a station called
Speaker 1: Avenue Que, which is slowly, slowly taking over Broadway. I could,
Speaker 1: I could, but at any rate, sometimes the Broadway thing, like,
Speaker 1: I haven't told Pandora specifically or there's no you know,
Speaker 1: I haven't gone through the genre system, which you can
Speaker 1: also do. They have a thing where you can select
Speaker 1: music by genre if you want to just leave it
Speaker 1: more as a more broad uh spectrum. But I haven't
Speaker 1: told Pandora of course that, you know, I just want
Speaker 1: music that it's from musicals, so occasionally. You know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different styles of musicals out there, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, some of them are, you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of big melodramatic stuff like the Android Weber stuff with
Speaker 1: Fantom of the Opera and all that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and then some of them are more rock and roll based.
Speaker 1: I mean, even sticking with Andrew laid whatever you go
Speaker 1: with Jesus Christ Superstar and you've got like that seventies rock. Well,
Speaker 1: occasionally a seventies rock song will come in because it's
Speaker 1: very similar to music that's in that play. But I
Speaker 1: don't want it there because that's my musical station. This
Speaker 1: is not a musical song. It blongs somewhere else, So
Speaker 1: I'll just move it over to one of the stations
Speaker 1: it does belong in, or if I hate the song,
Speaker 1: I'll just give it the thumbs down. Now, we were
Speaker 1: asked specifically about skipping songs and thumbs down songs and
Speaker 1: things like that, and why you're limited and what's the
Speaker 1: deal behind that. I kind of wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: one other thing first, just and and it's related. It's transitions, um,
Speaker 1: because that that is the thing I mean. Um. Actually,
Speaker 1: when I was doing a little extra research, of course,
Speaker 1: I've been using Pandora for years. I'm pretty familiar with it,
Speaker 1: but I was trying to look for the answers to
Speaker 1: specific questions. And one of the things I kept seeing
Speaker 1: seeing on on the Pandora blow Dog was people asking why, uh,
Speaker 1: someone might upgrade. There's a paid version of Pandora called
Speaker 1: Pandora One which we could talk about in a minute.
Speaker 1: But people keep its thirty six dollars a year, and
Speaker 1: people say, why I want to pay thirty six dollars
Speaker 1: a year? You know that's ridiculous. Well, the thing is,
Speaker 1: this music has to be licensed, um, because the artists
Speaker 1: are supposedly getting paid for songs that are getting played
Speaker 1: on internet radio stations as well as satellite radio as
Speaker 1: well as terrestrial radio. Um. The internet radio in particular
Speaker 1: has been an issue, right, internet radio royalties. It's a
Speaker 1: performance piece. I mean, you are whereas the band itself
Speaker 1: is not performing the song, your service is performing the
Speaker 1: song in lieu of the band, and and therefore the
Speaker 1: band should be able to be compensated for that performance. Right.
Speaker 1: And it's not just the band, it's also the music
Speaker 1: label all that kind of stuff too. Studio write, the
Speaker 1: writers and the performers, and uh, as somebody registered with
Speaker 1: one of the music performance services, you know, I'm happy
Speaker 1: to see that they're you know, paying attention to that. However,
Speaker 1: they have to license this stuff, and as part of
Speaker 1: their license there are certain terms and conditions, uh that
Speaker 1: they have to meet. One of those big ones is
Speaker 1: that you are not allowed to play a song on demand, Like,
Speaker 1: you can't just pick a song and say I want
Speaker 1: to hear this right now on Pandora, and that's what
Speaker 1: I want to hear, and that's all that I'm interested in.
Speaker 1: Pandora's not a play for on demand service like that,
Speaker 1: So you couldn't say I want to hear meat loafs.
Speaker 1: I will do anything for love, but I won't do
Speaker 1: that because I've got twenty seven minutes to kill and
Speaker 1: I'd really like to hear some melodramatic music. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could say it, but it's not gonna happen because
Speaker 1: Pandora doesn't work that way. Uh. And you also can't
Speaker 1: rewind and listen to something that you just listen to. Uh.
Speaker 1: That that's also part of the part of the agreement
Speaker 1: with You can pause it, you just can't rewind. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, now, if you did accidentally thumbs down a song,
Speaker 1: you can go back and give the thumbs up, but
Speaker 1: it's not gonna play it again. It's just gonna switch
Speaker 1: it in the database so that so that it will
Speaker 1: eventually play it further down. But um, yeah, these are
Speaker 1: terms that Pandora had to agree to in order to
Speaker 1: get a deal to be able to to present this
Speaker 1: music in the first place. And for a while things
Speaker 1: were actually looking pretty grim for Pandora and other internet
Speaker 1: radio stations because they were being held to pretty extreme
Speaker 1: um conditions as far as you know how much money
Speaker 1: they had to pay uh to be able to play music.
Speaker 1: For a while, it looked like it was going to
Speaker 1: be a per performance, per person model, which means that
Speaker 1: every time someone listens to a certain song on Pandora,
Speaker 1: Pandora would have to pay for that. Now it's more
Speaker 1: of a kind of more like a very broad spectrum
Speaker 1: where you're you're paying a lump sum in order to
Speaker 1: have the right to play certain kinds of music. So
Speaker 1: it's no longer every single time I'm the song place
Speaker 1: you pay up. It's you pay this lump sum to
Speaker 1: the industry and then you're allowed to play the music. Yes,
Speaker 1: which is great because if it had been the other way,
Speaker 1: Pandora might not even be around anymore currently as far
Speaker 1: as the royalties situation goes, um, you can be a
Speaker 1: Pandora account holder and listen for up to forty hours
Speaker 1: a month for free, right um. If you go over that,
Speaker 1: then they'll charge you a month if you want to
Speaker 1: and for the rest of the month if you want
Speaker 1: to keep listening. UM, or you can pay for Pandora one,
Speaker 1: which is the service I was telling you about a
Speaker 1: moment ago um which uh it's thirty six dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Gives you also some other perks. Uh. You don't see
Speaker 1: any ads on the page anymore. Um. Also you get
Speaker 1: a higher quality of audio. The normal bit rate I
Speaker 1: believe is kvps and um that goes up to one
Speaker 1: for for the higher quality, and you get um. You
Speaker 1: know that you don't have to to deal with so
Speaker 1: many Hey what do you do? And are you still listening? Um?
Speaker 1: Hey excuse me little alerts? Yeah, where just the music
Speaker 1: just suddenly stops and then you have to go over
Speaker 1: and actively click on something so that Pandora will keep playing. Well,
Speaker 1: they don't want to be paying royalties for songs if
Speaker 1: no one is. Actually are they still doing that? Yes,
Speaker 1: they are still doing I wasn't sure I have that
Speaker 1: I have that thing going on. I haven't had I
Speaker 1: haven't had Pandora play for that long a time, and
Speaker 1: so such a long time that I haven't and I
Speaker 1: haven't noticed it recently. And I'll listen to Pandora, but
Speaker 1: I usually end up listening, you know, in half hour stints,
Speaker 1: so I don't tend to encounter that very much. Well. Um,
Speaker 1: so as far as the skipping goes, you can skip
Speaker 1: up to I believe ten times an hour. No, six
Speaker 1: six skips per hour, twelve per day if you're a
Speaker 1: free user. If you if you're not in a particular station,
Speaker 1: now yes, uh, twelve per day, no across all stations.
Speaker 1: If you're a free list, if you're if you have
Speaker 1: the free account. Um, yeah, because I actually went to
Speaker 1: the fact to look this up. If you're if you
Speaker 1: have a free Pandora account, you are limited to six
Speaker 1: skips per hour per station, so that that might be
Speaker 1: what you're thinking of, that six per hour per station,
Speaker 1: but total if you're a free user, now only partially wrong, right.
Speaker 1: If you're a Pandora one user, so you're paying the
Speaker 1: three six dollars a year, Uh, you don't have a
Speaker 1: maximum number of skips that you per day. You can
Speaker 1: skip as many times as you want, but you're still
Speaker 1: limited to six per hour per station, So you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't just keep on skipping songs, you know forever.
Speaker 1: You you do run out? Now, if you have a
Speaker 1: hundred stations, and you know, you know, if you make
Speaker 1: a hundred of the same station, then you theoretically will
Speaker 1: eventually hear the songs you want to hear just by
Speaker 1: keep on skipping and then go to the next station
Speaker 1: and continue skipping. So uh but yeah, again that's part
Speaker 1: of the licensing agreement um with the music industry. I mean,
Speaker 1: Pandora Radio has to play ball. If it doesn't, then
Speaker 1: they don't have any content. And as for content, actually
Speaker 1: I looked up again in their fact and it says
Speaker 1: currently they have around three quarters of a million songs
Speaker 1: in their database, so seven fifty thousand songs. And that's
Speaker 1: of course across multiple genres. Oh and you know, we
Speaker 1: were talking about the whole the different qualities that songs have.
Speaker 1: I meant to mention this too. I thought it was
Speaker 1: really interesting that they don't use the full set of
Speaker 1: of of attributes for every single song, you know, they don't.
Speaker 1: They don't break it down to four categories or whatever. Uh.
Speaker 1: Certain genres have their own um attributes. So for example,
Speaker 1: rap might have East Coast versus West Coast inspired rap.
Speaker 1: The rap songs tend to have more lyrically based criteria
Speaker 1: than you would see in other songs, because rap is
Speaker 1: very much focused on the lyrics. Yes, so depending upon
Speaker 1: the genre that you're listening to, you'll have a different
Speaker 1: set of criteria that that song is going to be
Speaker 1: uh classified us and then or you know that they
Speaker 1: used to classify that song rather and uh so that
Speaker 1: that's what they're looking at when they're going to be
Speaker 1: pulling up the next one on the list. Uh. I
Speaker 1: I found Pandora to be pretty much the one of
Speaker 1: the coolest sites on the net. I mean, it's one
Speaker 1: of the ones that I tend to rely on whenever,
Speaker 1: you know, especially if I'm working from home. I've got
Speaker 1: Pandora on my this is like plug Orama, but I've
Speaker 1: got to Pandora Radio on my Roku and so I'll
Speaker 1: just switch it over to my Avenue Q station so
Speaker 1: I can, you know, do jazz hands between writing articles.
Speaker 1: This is almost almost not a lie. Um, So I
Speaker 1: didn't need to know that. Um. Actually that brings up
Speaker 1: a good point. One thing that's uh. One thing they're
Speaker 1: playing ball especially has allowed Pandora to do is they've
Speaker 1: gotten themselves into a number of pretty cool partnerships. Um.
Speaker 1: Not only with with Roku, but um, of course there
Speaker 1: are applications for Android and the iPhone OS. I was
Speaker 1: so happy when they finally got the Android app out there.
Speaker 1: That the iPhone app had been out for several months
Speaker 1: before it finally came to Android, but that I thought
Speaker 1: that was where I said, you know, these guys not
Speaker 1: only get the music classification game, they get the app
Speaker 1: game because they understand that this is where the futures
Speaker 1: headed and they got on board as fast as they
Speaker 1: possibly could, which I mean that that's shows a very
Speaker 1: forward thinking company too. Yep, yep. And there you know,
Speaker 1: it's not limited to uh to the mobile devices either.
Speaker 1: They've got a lot of home based while Roku, but
Speaker 1: they've also got other home based appliances as well, some
Speaker 1: of the internet radio tuners that are out there in
Speaker 1: stereo systems um plus. I believe the new tvo UM
Speaker 1: is going to have Pandora capability embedded into it. And
Speaker 1: they you know, they've done a lot to to try
Speaker 1: to reach out to different kinds of outlets, so it's
Speaker 1: not just the desktop computer um where you're going to
Speaker 1: see that, and I think they've been more successful at
Speaker 1: that than a lot of the other Internet radio stations,
Speaker 1: although um, there are others who have their own apps
Speaker 1: out and uh, you know, but they're they're not quite
Speaker 1: as as adept at making those connections, those business connections released.
Speaker 1: They may have gotten beaten to it if Pandora's gotten exclusive,
Speaker 1: right And uh uh have you discovered any cool new
Speaker 1: artists or people you were not familiar with through pandora UM?
Speaker 1: In In some cases yes, especially as I started to
Speaker 1: explore UM jazz because it's something I've gradually been getting
Speaker 1: into over the past couple of years. And um, so
Speaker 1: I started a couple of different jazz stations in UM
Speaker 1: Symphonic Music Stations UM and gradually have made notes of
Speaker 1: different composers and artists that that I like, um, you know,
Speaker 1: over the past couple of years, just doing that because
Speaker 1: I don't know about about you, But speaking for myself,
Speaker 1: when I'm editing articles, I find it difficult to listen
Speaker 1: to a lot of music with lyrics in it, although
Speaker 1: I can listen to music, so if I can listen
Speaker 1: to instrumental stuff, UM, I sort of gave me an
Speaker 1: opportunity to explore those genres and you know, every once,
Speaker 1: but the problem is, uh, you can find out exactly
Speaker 1: who it is, so uh, suddenly I'll have to stop
Speaker 1: what I'm doing and go, you know, bookmark the artist,
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool. They've got you know, Facebook integration.
Speaker 1: You could share that with your your friends on Facebook. Um,
Speaker 1: and you can even purchase songs, and you can purchase
Speaker 1: songs too, which is good because you know, it's an
Speaker 1: opportunity to learn more about music. It's not just entertainment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one artist in particular that I wanted to quickly
Speaker 1: mention and this was This was from it was off
Speaker 1: my my radio station that was based off Jonathan Colton,
Speaker 1: who of course is the the Internet geek music god
Speaker 1: code Monkey himself or r E or Brains or skull
Speaker 1: Crusher Mountain, one of those three tends to be most
Speaker 1: people's favorites. Um. I was listening to the station and
Speaker 1: there was a an artist who came up named Mark
Speaker 1: Aaron James, and uh, if you haven't heard him, I
Speaker 1: recommend checking it out if you like geeky type stuff.
Speaker 1: He has a great song called Aqua Aqua Man's Lament,
Speaker 1: which is Aqua Man singing to Vicky vale A k a,
Speaker 1: one of Batman's love interests. And uh, that song pretty
Speaker 1: much convinced me that Pandora was the greatest thing ever,
Speaker 1: because I would have never come across this guy on
Speaker 1: my own, you know, it would have just been a
Speaker 1: you know, incredible happy accident otherwise. So, uh, and that's
Speaker 1: just one example. I mean, granted, I've heard tons and
Speaker 1: tons of different stuff. I've been introduced to shows I
Speaker 1: didn't know about through my punk rock station, I mean
Speaker 1: avenue queue. And that's one of the benefits of doing
Speaker 1: this and and listening to stations like or you know,
Speaker 1: different internet radio stations. And I found the same kind
Speaker 1: of thing with satellite radio many years ago, is that
Speaker 1: they're you know, because they're not driven by the same
Speaker 1: interests that terrestrial radio is. You know, the standard, uh,
Speaker 1: turn on your radio and that's what you get, hundred
Speaker 1: song playlist and they're just gonna keep on shuffling through
Speaker 1: it over and over and over again. Yeah, you just
Speaker 1: you just don't find it with those those types of stations,
Speaker 1: at least not in in this part of uh the century.
Speaker 1: It wasn't it wasn't always that way, but um so
Speaker 1: I think internet radio is really good for that, and
Speaker 1: specifically Pandora and the ability to bookmark artists and and
Speaker 1: the fact that they've got the information about them, they
Speaker 1: carry a lot of biographical information about them. Um, you
Speaker 1: might be able to find out other artists who influenced
Speaker 1: them and explore them as well, which I think is
Speaker 1: a boon to people who really like music, especially different
Speaker 1: kinds of music, because you might find that there are
Speaker 1: connections between musicians that you would not necessarily expect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a good way of discovering all those bands that
Speaker 1: bands other bands, uh site as as big influencers that
Speaker 1: never seemed to get any real attention outside of the
Speaker 1: immediate music industry. So I mean there are hundreds of
Speaker 1: those like came to mind. The first one I think
Speaker 1: of as the Band, which you know a lot of
Speaker 1: people know about the band now, especially if you listen
Speaker 1: to stuff from the B side because they talked about
Speaker 1: them all the time. But the band, that's that's one
Speaker 1: of those groups that all these different musicians cite as
Speaker 1: a big influence on their music. But um, in general
Speaker 1: you might say that that you know, their fame was
Speaker 1: mostly contained in the music industry. I mean, they they
Speaker 1: had more success than just that obviously, but it's a
Speaker 1: good example. Well, I guess that wraps up the discussion
Speaker 1: on Pandora Radio. Justin thanks a lot for writing in.
Speaker 1: That was a fun one for us to talk about
Speaker 1: because we both really do like the website. And if
Speaker 1: any of you guys heard that wasn't clear, uh so,
Speaker 1: rush out and make an account now. Um, if any
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