April 4, 2008 at 8:17 am · Authored by Ewan · Filed under Mobile Services

When I’m in the States, I listen to Pandora a lot. It describes itself as ‘a new kind of radio station that plays only music that you like’. It does this via a rather complicated matching process (”the music genome project”) and I’ve found it fantastic.

I can’t get the service in the UK because the absolute idiots that run the music licensing in the UK weren’t able to come to an understanding with the Pandora team. The licensing folk really are stupid. Class A stupid. I’d love to have it out with them. I’ve spent about 100 pounds worth on music I’ve discovered via Pandora, I think. But I don’t discover new artists when I’m in the UK as easily since Pandora limits my access via IP.

You can, if you’re really determined, spoof your IP and get access. But I just don’t have the time or inclination to worry about it.

The key with Pandora is that it’s music matching technology actually works. All you need to do is type in the name of just one artist. That’s what I did. Then Pandora creates a ‘radio station’ based on that and populates it with songs that you’ll probably like — and it does this with 100% accuracy as far as I’m concerned. You just stream it through your browser. Nice, simple, easy. I often have it on for hours at a time.

I’m delighted to see that Pandora is now available on selected handsets from Sprint and AT&T. This kind of service offering would make me change provider or change handsets. I’d like to see more of this from operators — focus on value added services (and, hey, charge me for this, I’d pay a few pounds or dollars a month for it) rather than screwing customers on commodity services.

It seems that Pandora is actually free of charge for Sprint customers with the Sprint Vision Pack; and with AT&T, Pandora appears to be free — but you might have to pay for data (AT&T recommends their MEdia Max data plan). So as long as you’ve got the relevant plan, you can be Pandoring ’til the cows come home. More information here.