The nuts and bolts of this process are fairly straightforward: After registering for a free Pandora account, the user creates a radio station by naming a band or a performer--say, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Within seconds, a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song will play, followed by bands that meet the Pandora search's criteria for Yeah Yeah Yeahs-esque sonority (in this case, "punk influences and electric-guitar riffs"), with the occasional Yeah Yeah Yeahs track mixed in. Each station you create is saved to your account. If you come back to your account later, each station will contain a whole new selection of songs--most likely by some of the same artists but in a different order. Of course, there is a small price to pay for the service, though it doesn't directly affect your wallet. Graphical ads are pushed throughout your listening interface, though you can always minimize your window to avoid them (more on that later). Another option is to pay for Pandora's ad-free premium service, which costs $12 for three months or $36 per year.
This is an imperfect system, since it's hard--if not impossible--to build a perfect set of "sounds like" algorithms. For instance, creating a station for Gillian Welch will render a plethora of the expected folk/country-tinged singer-songwriter ballads, but annoyingly, almost all of them will be by women. Presumably, a listener who likes Gillian Welch would also like, say, Will Oldham, Bob Dylan, Vic Chestnut, and so on--you get the point. A Pavement station unearths some bands with approaches so far removed from Pavement's detached delivery that it's kind of funny when they show up (New Order?). The success rate is fairly high, however--we did discover several decent new bands and artists, and occasionally, Pandora nails it: A Ghostface Killah station unearthed not just any old hip-hop tracks but a majority of hip-hop from rap's underground/indie artists, since Ghostface rests fairly far outside the mainstream top 40.
As a test of Pandora's customer service, we sent a random query to see whether anybody was out there, and "Vic" wrote back to us in 29 minutes--not bad! And as far as extra features go, you can add your radio stations and your favorite songs as a sidebar to your blog by following a few simple steps. Also, if you click one of the tracks in your play queue, you get a pop-up box that gives you some options related to that song. You can find out why Pandora played that track, make a new station based on the song, buy the song from iTunes or the album from Amazon.com, add it to your favorites page, or designate if you like or dislike the track. Fans of Slim Devices' products will be happy to hear that Pandora supports the Slim Devices Squeezebox.
Disappointing features include the Pandora player's Minimize function, which creates a smaller-size window but ends play of your current station, then resumes with a new song. Probably the ultimate bummer is the inability to rewind and listen to a track you liked. Due to Pandora's music-licensing agreement, playback is a one-shot deal, so you'd better jot it down quickly if something blows your mind.
Our minor grievances aside, Pandora (did we mention it's free?) offers an enjoyable way to discover new music--especially when you're at a loss as to what to listen to next--and it's worth the minimal effort required to set it up.