The wife and I have been using Pandora a lot lately. It is a wonderful online music source, all streaming. Pandora uses the Music Genome Project (same company, differnet titles), which strives to 'capture the essence of music at a fundamental level'. If you are not deeply affected by music, that phrase will probably bounce right off of you. As a user, the way it works is simple, visit the site, punch in an artist or song that typifies what you want to hear, and Pandora will build a station, or ongoing playlist, from you suggestion. You may never hear your suggestion if it is a song, but you will hear a plethora of similar music. You can also add a bit of variety by adding in futher suggestions to your station. As music pops up, you can vote it up or down to refine you station a little more. Every artist/song you add or remove changes the overall vibe of the station. Most of the times you will be surprised by how accurate it is, but on occasion you will get a bad one.
For example, the original tone of the story I am woking on was set to the tone of the band Garbage. So when I am writing, I tend to pop on my Garbage station and go. But there is this band that has been removed from my list too long for me to remember their name, similar sound to the Garbage, except the vocals. The singer was pumped with attitude and had a brittish accent, but the lyrics made me picture a scene where Paris Hilton was talking shit to a bunch of other party girls in some club. Not all that appealing.
