Queen of Dreams Radio
Last summer, a friend told me about Pandora Radio. She raved about how awesome it is to just log in online and listen to only the music she likes (for her, she likes new age). I thought, ‘That’s cool’ as I listened to her pour out heartfelt appreciation for Pandora. I remember thinking about Pandora the band, and wondered how out of all of the words in the world why the creators would call this online station this word that is so linked up to the band.
That was pretty much all I thought and I tucked the nugget away in my mind. Throughout the year, others mentioned the station… Doreen, my music friend, said one day, “Yep, I plugged into Pandora and off I went!” I noticed it and thought, ‘Hmmm, there it is again… why would anyone want to plug into that station when we all have such extensive CD collections?’
I just didn’t get it. Yes, the first friend who travels and uses a notebook computer and doesn’t take her music with her, yes, that made sense, but I didn’t understand.
That is, until I had a craving for something I didn’t have an extensive CD collection for – classical!
That’s when I got what Pandora was all about for me, anyway. And, then I got to learn what Pandora is all about, period.
I had three CDs of Vivaldi, one of my favorite composers, but I didn’t have more than one CD each for Bach, Schubert, Mozart or Tchaikovsky. That’s when the nugget of Pandora Radio came to mind. Oooooh, I can dine there! And, dine I did. I so enjoyed making different stations for the composers and listening to this amazing music streaming in a steady flow of specific music (you can make individual stations that only play music that meets your order) while I worked away on my book. So, now I get it. I so want to let others get it, listen to it, tap into it, too! A-mazing!
Oh, and what about that name? Pandora is about the Music Genome Project, and the name… This is what Pandora says of the name selected: Pandora means "all gifted" in Greek. In ancient Greek mythology, Pandora received many gifts from the gods, including the gift of music, from Apollo. She was also, as we all know, very curious. Unlike those gods of old, however, we celebrate that virtue and have made it our mission to reward the musically curious among us with a never-ending experience of music discovery.
Perhaps that is why I never visited before…I’m curious in so many ways, but with a CD collection of more than 5,000 CDs, I have such a diversity of music I love, I never ‘got it’ before… now I do… and have enjoyed so much more due to all the work the folks at Pandora have put into making music magical for all of us.
Oh, and another bo-nus… is that Pandora remembers your ‘stations’ (you can choose up to 100 individual selections and the station will serve up only music that matches your order), so when I login, I get a steady serving of classical with just a few keyboard clicks. Per-fect!
I’ll share more in another post what the whole hunger for classical was all about in the first place… more on that later. For now, enjoy, Pandora Radio!
