I’ve been really getting into Pandora lately. If you don’t know about Pandora, it’s a free Internet music service that taps into the “Music Genome” project. Unlike Last.fm (another interesting music service), which utilizes social filtering, Pandora takes into account the music’s characteristics (instrumentation, rhythm, tempo, and on and on – nearly 400 different attributes or “genes”). You can create up to 100 different stations of your own. You start by “seeding” your stations with a particular song, artist, or composer, and Pandora will play similar music. You can then further refine your stations by giving it a thumbs up or down. You can also add variety to each station by adding additional “seed” songs, artists, or composers.

One of my favorite modern composers is Arvo Pärt. My “Arvo Pärt Radio” station not only gives me some of my favorite Pärt pieces, but also some new performances on recordings I do not own, and more interestingly, it’s been introducing me to other composers such as Henryk Gorecki that I wasn’t very familiar with, and Phillip Glass, whom I had thoroughly written off. Some of his work is quite interesting!

I’ve built a “Study” station (for when I’m working on a sermon, etc.) seeded by Pange Lingua and the piano music of Erik Satie. It’s perfect.

Some other stations I’ve built I’ve titled Cool Jazz, Modern Jazz, Progressive Rock, Quirky Girls, and Lutheran Composers.

Check it out. No matter what kind of music you like, it’s loads of fun, especially if you already enjoyed building smart playlists in iTunes or using the Genius feature.