I
know there are lots of ways to listen to music online, but I’d love to be able
to create something like a radio station that played only songs I like. What
are my options?
Doug’s never been into purchasing
CDs, but Ken used to purchase a lot of them—he’s got a huge collection of them
in boxes. Of course, he rarely plays any of them; they’re all ripped and stored
on a network-attached storage (NAS) device, and he can enjoy any of his music
anywhere in his house, or on the road, by simply streaming it from the NAS.
When Ken stops buying CDs, you know the world has really changed; that time has
come. Just as cassette and 8-track tapes finally disappeared (although there
are still folks using cassette tapes to listen to music, they’re few and far
between), CDs are at the end of their life cycle, and we couldn’t be happier.
At this point, the discs and their packaging are an environmental nightmare;
and, since you cannot recycle the unwanted discs, they simply end up eating
space in landfills.
Clearly, unless you’re a serious
audiophile who requires the highest fidelity reproduction, digitized music
(which is almost always compressed in some way, and therefore loses some of its
fidelity to the original source) stored on a hard drive (local or cloud-based)
is the way to go at this point. The question is, however: Where do you find the
music you want to listen to, in a continuous stream? You can purchase tracks
from any of several different sources, but then it’s up to you to create your
own playlists. The question here is how to create something like a personalized
radio station that can play music you like, continuously. (You may note that
we’re not even discussing “illegal” sources of online music—we have no interest
in contemplating how you can find copyrighted music for free.)
Although music services come and
go, and you may have your own favorite, Ken strongly favors Pandora.com, which
allows you to easily create your own “stations” by supplying search keywords.
Pandora provides both a free and a paid service: If you opt for the free
service, you get a lot of ads and restrictions on how many songs you can skip;
the paid service allows for fewer restrictions and no ads.
To try it out, Ken browsed to http://www.pandora.com, and when asked,
entered the name Debussy (to hear music of the classical composer Claude
Debussy). Music started playing immediately, and soon other music like that of
Debussy’s filled the room (as did ads, unfortunately, without a paid account).
If you’re a fan of Johnny Cash, for example, you could enter that name and
create a Johnny Cash station. You can create as many different stations as you
like, and switch between them as the mood suggests.
We suggest trying out Pandora to
see if it fits your needs. You can use it for free, but you’ll be happier with
a paid account.
You might also want to investigate
other options: Spotify (http://www.spotify.com)
and the new Beats Music (http://www.beatsmusic.com)
also provide large catalogs of music, for a fee. (Spotify has a free service,
like Pandora, with somewhat irritating ads.) No matter which option you choose,
you’ll be able to play just the music you like, in a continuous stream.
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