Pandora

Pandora is easily one of the greatest services ever made for the Internet. You tell Pandora what songs or artists you like, it finds other artists and music like it. In short, you build your own radio stations where you, eventually, only hear the things you like. Each time a new song is played you can either “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” the song. The more information you give, the better the program becomes at getting songs you will probably like.

Best of all the service is free and available on the Blackberry, iPhone, the Web, Boxee, basically anywhere you have an Internet connection. There are limitations, you can only skip 6 songs an hour per “station” you create because of licensing issues and the ability for Pandora to find the things you like isn’t perfect. With that said, it is a great way to listen to music! (If you want similar functionality but would rather have things organized by type of music for you, see Slacker Radio).

iHeartRadio

If traditional radio is more your style, iHeartRadio is a service from Clear Channel Communications that streams content from their radio stations. It is available as an application on the iPhone & Blackberry and a Web application. You can listen to your local Clear Channel stations or those around the country, meaning that if you are looking for a specific talk radio host or style of music, you should be able to find them on iHeartRadio.

Satellite Radio

Finally, if you have a satellite radio subscription, you should check out the SiriusXM application on the iPhone and now the Blackberry. You can get most of the content, minus Howard Stern. If you have a Mac I HIGHLY recommend the program Pulsar from the company Rogue Amoeba. Pulsar is a simple but well done program that gives you full access to every XM or Sirius station (depending on which service you subscribe to). 

Quick Hits

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• Google teaming up with the NSA… If you have privacy concerns about this, you are not alone!

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Author: Jeff Commaroto

Executive Assistant at Tipping Point Media.

Jeff Commaroto has written 26 articles for us.