Pandora is my second favorite iPhone app. It’s like having your own radio station programmed right into your iPhone. I can listen to my two favorite types of music whenever I want: Country and Western. For those not familiar with Pandora, we’ll do a quick lesson here.
First, it has nothing to do with a visually stunning yet trite story about an alien race being decimated by a big, bad evil American corporation (if you can’t tell, I found the movie to be dishonest, simplistic, and disingenuous – but that’s a story for another time). Rather, Pandora is a cool free website where you can pick your favorite musicians and/or songs and then Pandora will play you that music and similar music all day long. It’s fantastic!
The iPhone Pandora app takes that great website and makes it mobile. Wherever you have a cell connection, you can be streaming your favorite music. What do you think you’d pay for this app? $9.99? Nope, lower. $5.99? Nope, still lower. $0.99? Wrong again. This incredible app is completely free!
Like all things man made, this app is still not perfect. It suffers from 3 basic flaws – two of which are iPhone related:
- Because it’s an app and because the iPhone doesn’t multi-task, you can’t listen to Pandora and do anything else. If you try to text, surf the web, check an email, or anything else; the “radio” stops playing. This is a problem that I hope Apple fixes soon. We really need multi-tasking.
- It drains your iPhone battery in a hurry. Again, this is not Pandora’s fault but it is something to be aware of. If you listen a lot, you’ll need to charge your phone about every 12 hours.
- The music selection can be a little repetitive. This one is Pandora’s fault. I have a rather eclectic station setup for myself. It has country, classic rock, indie music, alt-country, and a little headbanging music. Instead of getting a nice blend, I’ll hear 5 slow, gut wrenching country songs in a row, then 5 Metallica type songs, and then 5 whiney, male, indie “rockers”… You get the picture. I wish they’d do a better job of blending the music.
All-in-all, though, if you’re a music fan and you own an iPhone, this is an app for you. Download it today and start sucking up that AT&T bandwidth!
iPhone App Notes
- Name: Pandora
- Cost: Free
- Time to Learn: 10 minutes
- Addictiveness: High
- Overall Rating: 5/5