SPOTLIGHTm

Pandora for iPhone

What is it?

Pandora has long been an office favorite site for free Internet radio and music discovery (like Musicovery, Last.fm, and Grooveshark, among others). The iPhone version of Pandora takes the site’s basic premise of being able to create radio stations based on a song or artist and streamlines it for mobile. If you’re a fan of Paramore, Pandora will find songs by artists like them. If you want to hear something similar to Ne-Yo’s “Miss Independent,” it finds and streams similar upbeat R&B songs through their mysterious Music Genome Project.

How much does it cost?

Free.

Who is it good for?

People looking to discover new music. Anyone who is tired of his or her iTunes library or who doesn’t take the time to upload his or her library. Commuters with cell phone reception (non-Subway) who want to hear some new music on the way in for a little controlled variety in life.

Summary

Pandora’s customizable, easy-to-use Internet radio system is simple and useful. It’s no secret why the application continues to be one of Apple’s most popular and highest rated. Despite a limited library and the drains on your phone’s battery life caused by the application and inability to have the music play in the background while you explore other applications (a la the iPod function on the phone), Pandora’s simple focus on helping users find music they will probably like is more than enough reason to have this application take some space on your iPod.

Keep it or Delete it?

Keep it.

Pandora Auto-Completes While You Type

If you’re at all familiar with Pandora, you’ll instantly be familiar with the application. After signing up (no spam!) or logging in, choose a song or artist and Pandora creates a radio station for you with songs related to that song/artist.

A big plus with doing this on the iPhone application is the auto-complete feature, which appears to provide the most common artist names and songs that contain those same letters. As you can see, there is a wide range of “radio stations” on Pandora that you can choose from, spanning across different genres, generations, and artists. Choose a station and off you go!

Like the destination site, you’re unable to play specific songs (like if you wanted to hear “Tubthumping” by Chumbawumba) on-demand, but there’s a good shot that you’ll eventually hear the song you’re looking for as long as you enter it in as the name of your radio station.

As you listen to songs, you’re able to skip forward (unfortunately, not back) and approve or disapprove (thumbs up or down) of different songs to hear more or less songs like the one you’re listening to on your created station. It’s the same simple formula that has worked for Pandora for years and it works well on the iPhone.

The Pandora application is brilliant in its simplicity. Though the library is a bit limited and you’ll start to hear many of the same songs over and over if you continue to listen to one of your stations, it’s a welcome companion to break the monotony of your music-filled commute. You’ll discover new music, see who it’s by, and there’s a very good chance that you’ll like it. Powered by Pandora’s Music Genome Project, the song matching based on your tastes is top notch and incredibly easy to use.

In short, download Pandora, all the cool kids are doing it.