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If you love music, and really enjoy discovering new music, you’ll be just like me and love Pandora.

So, what is Pandora? First of all, it’s a streaming music service. With streaming music, you do not have to own the music. It comes in from the great cloud called the internet. The internet is in many ways replacing over the air radio. Of course, you will need a music playback device connected to the internet to experience it. This could be your computer or one of many new internet appliances designed to connect to your current music system, including products like Sonos
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The beauty of an internet source for your music is all of the data that can be pulled in. You can see cover art, information about the artist, and other interesting tidbits displayed graphically on the interface of your internet appliance.

What makes Pandora so special is it allows you to create and continually refine your own favorite radio stations. Think about this. What if you were in the mood for only 70′s rock and roll that made you feel really happy. Can you imagine how cool it would be if you could instantly hear this type of music and only this type of music? And, if on another day, you wanted to only hear Celtic Irish Pub bands? Yes, it’s all possible with Pandora.

Pandora is based on the Music Genome Project which began back in 2000 and continues full speed ahead to this day. Over 50 music analysts have been listening constantly to just about every song on the planet and assigning characteristics to each song. They have a list of close to 400 distinct musical characteristics to choose from. In many cases, over a dozen are assigned to an individual song.

To create a Pandora radio station, you first set up your account (which is totally free). You’ll then type in an artist or song. Pandora will give you some choice, you pick one, and voila!, your station is created. If you wish, you can add more songs and artists to your station. Now, this is the reason I love Pandora..once a song starts playing you have four choices: #1- just let it play; #2- skip to the next song; #3 press the thumbs up button (this tells Pandora you really like songs with these musical characteristics) or finally; #4 press the thumbs down button (this tells Pandora you do not like songs with these musical characteristics and skips to the next song)

As you can see, this allows you to totally refine your station. You have the option of assigning a name to your station, and you can have up to 100 different stations active at one time. Best of all, you can even share stations with your friends!

When you put the power of Pandora into your music system (Sonos is a great choice), you’ll find yourself listening to way more music, which as we all know, brings a ton of joy into our time with friends and family!