Internet killed radio's star

It’s no secret that I like to listen to music while I write. It helps me focus on the task at hand, and it keeps folks from interfering with my work. I know it sounds anti-social, but it’s the only way to keep my output up. The alternative is to stay at home and work by myself all day. But that can be somewhat career limiting over the longer term.

So when the MP3s and CDs I brought from home started to pale after the zillionth listen, I began looking for new sources of music.

Pandora seems like a funky solution to an ages-old problem. Log in, give it an artist or song, and it builds and plays a playlist that should match your listening taste. You can create as many different streams – called “Stations” – as you wish. It’s part of something that Pandora calls the Music Genome Project, and it allows listeners to listen to music the way it was meant to be heard: without amped-up ads for discount mattress warehouses and car dealerships.

There’s a paid, ad-free version. But I’m cheap, so I registered for the no-cost, ad-supported one. Listening to the same song over and over is somewhat problematic – they want you to sample, then buy, after all. No worries: the sound is excellent, and I’m being introduced to artists I never knew existed. Definitely ranks high on the cool meter for folks who hate what commercial radio has become and are looking for an alternative.

Drawbacks: I shudder to think what this would do to a mobile device, and I feel sorry for network admins who might soon find themselves managing rogue audio streams. But such is life on the road toward multimedia nirvana.

Your turn - a 2-parter

• Feel free to share any thoughts on cool tools you’ve come across that make work easier, or easier to take.
• Do you think Internet radio, satellite radio and all its brothers (sisters?) will kill commercial radio as we know it? How can conventional terrestrial, commercial radio (regular AM and FM stations) compete?