The new Pandora for iPhone still kicks ass, still free

Pandora is like a telepathic DJ in your head that predicts what kind of music you like then spins out a stream of tunes over an internet radio station customized just for you. It’s amazingly accurate, and a fantastic way to discover new artists and songs. Pandora is 2008′s top free app in the App Store and the newest version, released today, has features that makes this great iPhone app even better.

We’ll go ahead and assume that if you’ve had your iPhone or iPod touch before this past holiday season you probably already have Pandora installed and simply need to update it to the latest 2.0 version. For those you who just got your first iPhone or iPod touch, we’ll cut you some slack and advise you to go download it right after you read this. It’s free, so there’s no excuse.

Getting Pandora started is as easy as selecting a song or artist you wish to listen to. Pandora plays it, then you tap a thumbs up if you like it, thumbs down if you don’t. After the first song, Pandora fishes up another track it thinks you will like based on your vote. You then tap your vote on the next song, and so on. The more you vote the more accurate Pandora will be about predicting selections you will like. Trust us, it doesn’t take more than a few votes most of the time.

After Pandora starts consistently playing music you like, you can save those preferences in the form of a radio station. You can save multiple stations, up to 100 maximum, each with different preferences. This means you can have one station for background music you like to hear while working, another station for working out, another for parties, and so on.

Pandora may seem like a magical, musical genie, but there’s a lot of science going on in that bottle. The predictive algorithm is packed with more math than our brains can handle, but just know that it’s all based on the Music Genome Project, a database of over a century’s worth of scanned songs. Each song has 150 – 500 attributes associated with it so it can match up similar tracks based on rhythm, harmony, instrumentation, etc, etc.

Pandora songs have hooks into the iTunes Store which allows you to tap to download songs you want to own so you can play them any time you wish. You can also bookmark songs for easy recall. This latest update of Pandora includes some nice features like artist bios, share stations with friends, a progress bar, cover flow for songs recently heard, ability to listen to samples of all your bookmarked songs, and you can now create new stations by genre or by tapping on the album art.

There are a few minor caveats with Pandora. For now, it’s only available in the U.S., due mostly to licensing restrictions for the copyright material. Some listeners report sub-par sound quality which is likely due to bandwidth issues for that particular user, although most people report excellent audio. Also, Pandora stations are now subsidized with advertising, a change which irks some old-time Pandora users but in reality, it saved Pandora from joining the dead pool last year. Ads are a small price to pay for a free service that is so damn good. But perhaps the most annoying thing about Pandora stems from a limitation in the iPhone app that doesn’t allow apps to run in the background. This means that if you navigate away from Pandora, you can’t listen to it.

For a free product that kicks this much ass, it’s easy to overlook all the little nits and just enjoy the music.

• Pandora iPhone app – Free [app store]

 

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