A co-worker has turned me onto Pandora which is an effort by the Music Genome Project.

I am seriously hooked!

My music tastes run to the soft alternative; I’d have to say the Indigo Girls are my favorite musical group (and Girlyman and Vienna Teng are my favorite new artists). And here in DC, that kind of programming is non-existent. To get through the day I had been listening over the Internet to WYEP and WUMB, two progressive/folk public radio stations I listened to when I lived in Pittsburgh and Boston (respectively).

Anyways, Pandora uses the same Netflix/TiVo “if you like this, you might like this” technology to allow you to program your own music! You enter artists or songs that you like, and it begins to stream songs from those artists and others.

You cannot select specific songs, nor can you replay a song. This is apparently how Pandora can provide you with quality music that isn’t illegal. They are eventually going to work on streaming ads along with the music, but they also offer a subscription-based model. There’s also a really cool device that lets you play Pandora on your stereo.

This is just really, really fabulous.