I don’t write on hardware, but Pandora has really outdone itself recently. I’ll try to make this quick, so lets take a ride on the meme train.

Internet Radio Done Right

Pandora is an automated music recommendation and internet radio service created by The Music Genome Project. The service has two subscription plans: a free subscription supported by ads, and a fee-based subscription without these ads. Users begin by entering a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that it thinks are musically similar. Users are then able to provide feedback on the individual song choices — approval or disapproval — which the system takes into account for future selections.

Thank you Wikipedia. Consider Panadora the Last.fm of internet radio. On the surface its designed to help you find music that you’ll like based on Crowdsourced knowledge. If everyone else who liked The White Strips also downloaded “Oops I Did It Again,” then you probably will too. Standard fare really, but done just right.

Pandora’s Gone Mobile

Just recently, Pandora has announced that in collaboration with SanDisk they will be producing a new wi-fi enabled music player. The details of this new device are up in the air, but hopefully it turns out better than the Zune.

It just might. SanDisk is known for producing some pretty decent hardware, including their own Wifi offering the SanDisk Connect. This new player will be very similar, but much slimmer according to reports.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Pandora is making some really solid moves in the right direction. With Last.fm chomping at the bit to enter the music video market and everyone else without any real clue how to build real lasting communities around music that don’t involve directly brokering the sharing of files — Pandora is positioning itself to become to internet radio what MTV was to terrestrial media.

If you’re interested in taking a peek, Bruce Caldwell can help you out.