The Wife and I are big fans of Pandora, even moreso now that I have the iPhone app, which was the crucial missing piece in my quest to see that Houston radio is never again audible in my car..
My station-fu could use some work, however. In theory, you create one by using a particular artist or song as a "seed," and the "Music Genome Project" selects songs you should, theoretically, enjoy just as much. This has generally worked out well, even if one of my stations plays 80% Ryan Adams/Whiskeytown and another - thanks to overly restrictive "thumbs down" action - has a playlist of about 20 songs total.
But no matter how hard I try to edit one of my stations - a tentative foray into the world of electronica (probably my first mistake) - I can't weed out the Christian rock. I'm sure this is a result of my having inadvertantly "thumbs upped" a song of that ilk in the station's formative days, with the result that songs exhorting me to "praise his holy name" and what not inevitably pop up every hour or so, though they're pretty easy to pick out amid the usual array of Aphex Twin and Kraftwerk. Not a huge deal, but annoying enough to make e consider nuking the station entirely.
Or sticking to the Ryan Adams one.
Of course, I started with an Iron Maiden station, but I’ve been adding variety to it lately, such as Flogging Molly and Blackmore’s Night. Quite entertaining, actually. I’ll just be sure to thumbs down a Stryper or whatever passes for Christian rock these days. Thanks for the heads up. :p
When you access Pandora from your pc there’s an option to edit the station. You can go through there and clean up the thumbs up\thumbs down decisions that you’ve made on a given station. I have to do this about once every other month or so. Its sort of a reboot for various stations, otherwise after awhile they all start to sound the same for me or I get way too restrictive and I’m down to only a few songs in tight rotation.
Oh and for some reason, Pandora just really likes Ryan Adams and Whiskeytown. A lot. I find any station with an alt-country seed or thumbs up will eventually start playing them. Much like they seem to really like Rhett Miller’s solo stuff, which I can take or leave. Murray Hammond’s got a solo album out as well (I think it came out last year, its good, but a whole lot of train songs), but I’ve yet to see anything from it show up on any of my stations.