i {heart} pandora

The one (and only) thing that's stuck during our recent Reset Weeks is that the television is now very consistently off. In the past 3 weeks, I don't know if I've turned it on once. Crazy right?! Raf turned it on for all of 20 minutes to watch golf this weekend and had to listen to me whine the entire time about how it was killing my creative energy, even though I was in another room.

One of the joys of having the TV off is that music is on. After getting tired of listening to the last 3 albums I bought on my iPod, I rediscovered Pandora. For my mother (who is probably the only reader not familiar with Pandora, and the only reader without any streaming capabilities), Pandora is a free internet radio service where you get to listen to only music that you like. You create stations by inputting artists that you like, and it plays similar music, based on detailed song analysis from the Music Genome Project. If you don't like a song, you can give it a thumbs down and move onto the next. And the best part--there are no audio ads or breaks in the music. So great.

Basically, I've discovered I no longer need cable as long as I have Pandora. I tried to convince myself earlier tonight that it will probably also save me money on constantly buying new music I discover. However, that probably won't pan out for me. After having Pandora playing on a station built off Adele for the last 3 hours, I just heard Warm Whispers by Missy Higgins. Who the heck is she?? Loved her. Must have more. I'll probably have her album by tomorrow.

Unfortunately, I just noticed some news from last August that services like Pandora might have to close due to legislation that raised the royalty fees that internet radio stations have to pay. Lame. Sounds like they're headed to court to fight it soon. Crossing my fingers on that one. I'm thinking they should charge their advertisers more. We've been looking for a iPod player/alarm clock for our bedroom, but I noticed an ad tonight for the Logitech Squeezebox Boom, an all-in-one network music player. (No need to plug in your iPod.) Sold. That's the one. I hope Pandora is getting paid handsomely for that ad.