Pandora and the iPhone... The perfect storm.

I am an enormous fan of Pandora. If you aren't familiar with it, it's a site that allows you to "build" a radio station by specifying songs or artists as the "seeds." Once you set the seeds, the Pandora database searches for matching characteristics of the songs/artists you seeded, and then populates the radio station with other music that matches. You can also rate the songs that Pandora plays on your radio station, and the system uses that information to further refine the accuracy of the database's selections to more closely match your taste. You can have lots of stations, depending on your mood, but just like a real radio you can't go backwards and replay, and you don't actually get to choose specific songs to play.

I have been introduced to some terrific artists that I'd never heard of through this service - music that I've gone ahead and bought just from hearing it on Pandora (and, of course, it's really easy to do this at their site - buttons are available that take you straight to iTunes, Amazon, etc.). Best of all, the whole thing is free, and the only ads are visual ones on the webpage, no audio ads like I used to get on the old Spinner (like 10 years ago now).

The only thing more amazing than Pandora is Pandora available somewhere other than your computer, and that day has come: Pandora is available as an application on the new 3G iPhone. I had seen the ads and thought what an amazing option this was; well, apparently everyone agrees as Pandora is the third most popular app download for the new iPhone so far. Details here courtesy of Adweek via my friend Mike at Heartbeat Digital.