Salsa music w/o an iPod or CD's?

Yep, it's true!

Our good friend George Gardiner showed me a website a few weeks ago that I instantly was hooked by, Pandora.com. Perhaps you've heard of it or even use it, If you do then you know what i'm talking about when it comes the variety and flexibility of this site.

What you can do at this site is create your own radio station. From the moment you get to the site and enter either a favorite group or genre of music, the music instantly starts playing. Then, you the user get to take over and adjust the station to what kind of music you want to hear.

'How?' you ask...

When a song begins to play you choose whether or not you want to hear it. If you don't want to hear the song playing you simply hit the 'forward' arrows and the next begins. I don't know the actual number but Pandora allows you to skip only so many songs per hour.

Another way to tailor a station to your liking is what seems to me to be the genius part of this site...you can rate the songs played by clicking on the thumbs up or thumbs down icons. If you hit a thumbs up, Pandora will continue to play songs similar to one currently playing. if you hit a thumbs down, that song is never played on your station again (I think).

For example...I started my experience on Pandora by entering El Gran Combo in the box provided and the music started. Of course I enjoyed the El Gran Combo songs but the station also played songs that are similar to El Gran Combo...by using the features mentioned the station I created was playing songs I really liked!

Going yet another step further....you can add other groups to your station which demonstrates the true flexibility of this site. So I now have a station that plays only the salsa songs I like to hear...ahhhhhhhhhh

Two more attributes I'd like to mention that are great benefits to creating a station on this site:

1) New music!

Since I started listening to this station i've been introduced to some artists I've never heard of, one in particular is Tito Rodriguez....check out 'Baranga' by this artist

2) We all have cd's given to us by others and also mp3's downloaded or ripped that no one knows who they artist is or doesn't know the name of the song. They all show up as 'Track 3' by 'Unknown Artist', right? I believe i've come across 3 songs now that when listening I looked at the group and name of the song on the site and said to mysef, 'A-ha! So that's who sings this song!' It hasn't happened a ton but it's always good to have an 'A-ha' moment :).

Remember, this site can be used for all of your favorite music..so far it's been great to have on around the house when cleaning, doing dishes...or if I want to practice salsa. If you're allowed to listen at work this is a great way to listen to salsa as well.

George, thanks for introducing this site to me, it's been a great addition on  my 'Bookmarks'

Pandora

Have fun..

Glenn H