As usual with me, I'm having a hard time deciding if this topic belongs in Music or Affiliate Sites or one of the other categories, so if it doesn't fit here, I'm asking that one of the mods move it.

I just did a search of this site and could only find a few references to Pandora and those were pretty much buried in much broader topics like radio requesting.

I was exploring my Comcast account this morning and found a link to Pandora Radio. I'm still exploring all of the options but I'm so impressed that I had to share this now.

Pandora is a free Internet radio station:

http://www.pandora.com

And they have an Elliott Yamin station.

This station plays songs from Elliott's album interspersed with other songs. I've been listening for about 30 minutes and have heard I'm the Man and You Are the One.

They also have over 1500 comments about Elliott!!

I signed up through my Comcast account so that when I go to the link above, it already has me signed in, but I'm pretty sure that anyone can register and listen for free and leave comments :) .

Edited after looking at site again: Oops, I got the number of comments totally wrong. He doesn't have many comments at all but does have over 1500 (actually over 1600) subscribers to his station.

I registered, and listened all afternoon yesterday. It was so cool! Logging in again this morning. Thanks Mar! :chloe:

Thanks so much for the info. I'll have to check it out!

Chloe,

You're welcome.

I wondered if that was your comment that I saw last night. :) I'm going to wait a few days before I make a comment.

I've been listening a lot, but there are so many bells and whistles with this site that it's going to take me a while to learn most of the features.

Here are some things I've learned so far:

You can subscribe to a station by song or by artist, but beware if you subscribe by song. They are not allowed to play specific requests for a song. I subscribed to the Wait for You station this morning and listened for over an hour. I heard a lot of good music, including Find a Way, but I never did hear Wait for You. But if you click over to the side of a station you can get a list of subscribers to that station.

Here are some statistics regarding Elliott's music:

1697 subscribers to the Elliott Yamin Station -- hmm, it would be nice to get that number up though I don't think it affects what is played.

3520 (+/- a few) subscribers to the Wait for You station--now that is impressive

When they play a song (I just heard A Song for You) if you click on the name of the song in the info graphic at the top right, you can leave a comment about that specific song. There were only 3 or 4 comments about a Song for You.

Eventually, I'll hear Wait for You and will check out the comments.

If you click on Elliott's name in that graphic, you get a bio and the comments about Elliott.

There is one comment about Elliott that I found particularly gratifying:

I would have never heard of him if it wasnt for pandora, but im glad i did. I have found a new favorite to add to my lovable artist list!

Oh, Movin' On just started playing. :) Let me check the comments on that:

Oh my goodness, only 2 comments. :(

I'm still a novice with this station, but to me it seems that we could discreetly take advantages of some of its features to get more listeners of Elliott's music.

Chattycb,

Come back and give us your impressions. I think it's a fantastic site.

It is fantastic, though it is totally confusing. I haven't left any comments yet. The thing that confuses me is that it seems when you log out, then log back in, it always plays an Elliott song first. So is everyone hearing different songs?
Right now(10:21 a.m.) I am listening to John Legend- Save Room. and loving it!

:hooray:
Find A Way is playing right now!!!

This is wrong. First, the number is 1696 instead of 1697, but that wasn't my biggest mistake. That number is pages at 10/page, so the number of subscribers to the Elliott station is between 16960 and 16970. Now that is really impressive. :)

I'm still learning about the features, but an important one is that if you move your cursor over the album art, you can vote on each songs. And if you give it a thumbs-down, that song stops playing immediately. You can also fast-forward a maximum of 6 times/hour.

I finally heard Wait for You. It has about 8 comments, all of them very positive.

I've only been listening since yesterday, and I've heard most of the songs on Elliott's album at least once.

I think that there's a large pool of songs for each station, and that the songs are chosen randomly so two people listening at the same time will not be hearing the same songs.

I will be checking the stations of some of the artists who have songs on Elliott's station to see if Elliott's songs are playing on their stations. I'm pretty sure the answer will be yes. What a fantastic mechanism to introduce Elliott's music to people who like artists with similar styles.

i'M LISTENING TO yOU tAKE mY bREATH aWAY
:chloe:

Okay, so I've spent much of the day trying to figure this site out. I'm not there yet, but I'm getting close. :)

The number of pages of subscribers for Elliott has increased from 1696 to 1698 today. With 10 per page that an increase of at least 12 new subscribers today.
I hope some of these new subscribers are readers of this topic.

Here's a quick summary of what I think I know (to be revised in the coming days, I'm almost certain);

You can subscribe to up to 100 stations, but you can only have an artist as the seed for one of your stations. When you subscribe by artist name, that artist automatically becomes the seed for that station. That's why when you subscribe to Elliott Yamin, the first song you hear is a song from Elliott's album.

You can add more artists as seeds, but that means that music similar to that artist's music might be the first song played.

You can also add individual songs as seeds. I added You Are the One. The more seeds you have, the more variety you get and therefore, more than likely, less Elliott.

This is important: A set consists of 4 songs. If you move the cursor to the album graphic you can give the song a thumbs up, a thumbs down, or a triangle. (I'm not good with the triangle yet.) If you give it a thumbs down, that song will not be played again and the other songs in that set of four are skipped. If you give any artists a thumbs down twice, that artist will be banned from your station. If you give a song a thumbs up, then it becomes eligible to be the starting song the next time you log on. So no thumbs down for Elliott and thumbs up most of the time.

So what you do is design your own station. I like it.

And that's all I know. :)

I've been fascinated by Pandora since Monday and the more I probe the more fascinated I become. Here are some things I've learned through my scouring the Internet:

Pandora is available free of charge on the new iPhones which came out last week and there is an explosion of new listeners.

Pandora pays a fee each and every time a song is played--I've already added a few pennies to Elliott's coffer. :)

There is a huge battle going on about new rates for all Internet radio stations which were set (and presumably did but with stipulations) to go into effect on July 15.

In addition to all the reading I've been doing, I've been doing a ton of listening and refining my Elliott Yamin station. One of the really nice options is that you can share your station with someone whether or not they are signed up with Pandora.

If you haven't tried Pandora yet (or even if you are registered) and would be willing to listen to my station, all I have to do is provide Pandora with your email address. The first song you hear will probably be one of Elliott's.

If you're interested, just send me a PM with your email address and I'll get an invitation out to you.

Thanks to everyone that has shared what they know about Pandora. I hadn't heard of it until about a week ago when I walked over to my husband's computer to see what he was listening to. It was a station he'd created featuring some of his favorite singers. I'll have to get on there and create one for myself soon.

After a major scare that Pandora would go out of business due to new royalty rates, a settlement has been reached and all appears to be strong and growing with the service.

If you haven't tried Pandora yet, I highly recommend that you give it a try. It's also available on iPhone and perhaps other mobile services.

It takes a while to develop your station, but it is worth it. I have an Elliott Yamin station so I usually hear between 2 and 4 of Elliott's songs every hour. And it is such a pleasure to hear them sandwiched between other songs that I have given a "thumbs up" to. It seldom happens but this morning I heard FFL followed by Jordin followed by Daughtry, Elliott is the best by far. :)

If you want a radio station that you can listen to for long periods of time without wincing more than once or twice (and when that happens you can give a "thumbs down" to the song and it will never play again).

The service is free and Elliott get royalties.

Thank you OFE,

With everything going on in the world and our national economy, it's easy to overlook that Internet Radio is NOT fighting, (for the most part,) the royalties to singers and musicians, that terrestrial radio is.

We can and should patronize the places where we can hear Elliott's music and know that he and the recording musicians will be fairly acknowledged along with the song writer(s.)

Thanks O4E, I've set up my station and tweeted the link (pandora.com).

i LOVVVEE this site..one of my teachers actually showed us it at school. its awesome!

Pandora sent an email with some important information.

First and foremost is that they have reached an agreement on artist royalties and are out of any danger of being obliterated.

However, they are now limiting free use to 40 hrs/month. After you reach your limit for any given month, you can opt to pay 99 cents to finish out the month.

They also have an option for unlimited usage and no ads for $36/year. I just signed up for it this morning. To be able to listen to music that I actually like and to be able to do it for as long as I want makes this a real bargain for me. It's a great way to hear music that never gets played on the radio and to find artists that you like. I was surprised at how many "Thumbs-Up" I've given to Ne-Yo.

I revised my Elliott station and removed a lot of thumbs-up songs so that I hear Elliott more often. If you send me a PM with your email address, I'll send an invitation from Pandora with a link to my station.