Pandora

Pandora is like a radio station where you’re the DJ. You tell the service what you like by picking a genre, an artist or a song, and Pandora finds other tunes that are similar to your pick and plays those for you, too. As you tell Pandora whether you like or dislike each track, it further fine-tunes its offerings to peg only things you’ll want to hear. It’s all free with ad support, but you can opt for a paid version of the service to eliminate ads altogether.

The cool thing about Pandora is that you can create multiple stations and combine them for an eclectic mix of music that you can stream over either a Wi-Fi or 3G connection. If there’s a drawback, its Pandora’s licenses with the music industry, which limit the number of tracks you can skip every hour. The ads are also more annoying than not, but given the amount of free music on offer here, plus the convenience factor, it’s hard to complain too much.

Reviewed: May 10, 2011 | Phil Hornshaw

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