iPhone App Review: Pandora Radio

WOW is all I can say about this app. Ok not really, I can say much more, but WOWd is what I am. First off, this is my first time using Pandora Radio, I wasn’t even aware that there is also a desktop app as well. The premise behind Pandora is very simple, you choose a song or an artist to start things off and Pandora will then find other music similar to your choice and begin streaming these songs to your very own “channel”. You can have many different channels, like one for rock, one for hip hop, and one for blue grass On the Player itself you will see buttons for thumbs up, a thumbs down, volume control, pause/play, bookmark, skip, and music info. The thumbs up/down is where the magic happens. When you “thumbs down” a song it will remove it from your channel, when you “thumbs up” a song, Pandora will find other artists and songs like it and add them to your channel. Say you hear a song you like and want to make a note of the artist, you can use the bookmark button. You then can go to the desktop version and see your bookmarks. You can get direct links to amazon or iTunes to download the song, artists information and bios, and other like music. Another neat thing is the music info button, when you tap the button it will pop up a text box that explains why Pandora chose that song to add to your channel. In the player you will also get the album art for your music, which is a very nice touch. At first you will get the same artists a few times until Pandora widens your music taste. After a few hours you will have tons of different artists and songs on your channel. Just after an hour I heard 3-4 different bands I had never heard of, but I really liked. Pandora does an excellent job matching my music tastes. So if you are always on the hunt for new music and finding new artists, Pandora will not disappoint. Pandora for the iPhone/desktop is a great app and one app I would have gladly plunked down some jack for, luckily though, it is free! I use it all the time in the car plugged in to my AUX jack, it is MUCH better than listening to the same 8 songs the FM radio plays, and even more selective than my XM radio. Oh there are also no commercials at all. The only one down side to Pandora, is that you must have cell phone signal in order to use it, since it streams the music to your iPhone. Not really a big deal for me, but for some it may be different depending on your coverage. It does download the song, so if you loose coverage and than go back into coverage your song will continue to play uninterrupted. Stop what you doing and go give Pandora radio a try right now!

Pandora Radio Image Gallery

Here is the iTunes link: Pandora Radio

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