Similar to Yahoo LAUNCHcast’s learning and selection engine, I missed the first wave checking out 10 free hours of Pandora when it was in beta. Then they left beta and started charging and most of their buzz dissipated. Funny, how charging for something can kill momentum, isn’t it?

Finally, today I checked out and have been rocking to Pandora. There is a free version again (thanks Download Squad), this time supported by ads like LAUNCHcast does., although I’ve listened to dozens of songs today and haven’t heard a single commercial.

After filling out the registration information: email, password, year of birth, gender (optional) and I started out by choosing one of my favorite artists: Judas Priest. From there Pandora went to work queing up tunes for me to give a TiVo-like thumbs up or down. Three of the first five songs I liked. You can change your station name by clicking on the down arrow and choosing “Rename” — I named my station TD’s Rock Radio.

Sound quality
The music playing through the Flash interface was good quality and comparable to the “high” setting in LAUNCHcast, which is only available by paying a fee, so that’s a plus for Pandora.

Unlike LAUNCHcast, you are rating only songs, not artists, songs and albums. After skipping approximately 10 songs I received a popup message inside the Flash interface that said:

“Unfortunately, our music licenses force us to limit the number of songs you may skip each hour. Sit back and enjoy the music for now, and click “Guide Us” to let us know what you think of the music we’re playing.”

Before my hourly skips were used up, the songs I marked thumbs down automatically skipped ahead to the next recommended song. Smart.

By clicking on the “Guide Us” link in the Pandora interface I decided to find out why they were playing the current song: Gettin’ Better by Tesla (which I gave a thumbs up). Their answer?

Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features mild rhythmic syncopation, a subtle use of vocal harmony, a vocal-centric aesthetic, major key tonality, and many other similarities identified in the music genome project.

I added the link to the music genome project in that last quote. Also, of note: in the first 15 songs, not a single commercial played (as mentioned above, haven’t heard a commercial yet). Do the commercials start after a certain period of time, visits or logins? This is certainly not like Yahoo in that they play commercials every few songs. Pandora does say they are going to “ramp up” the commercials in the future.

Monetization
When you rate a song there is a convenient option to buy the song playing from iTunes or the album playing Amazon.

Sharing
Pandora creates a page which is a derivative of the email address used that contains songs marked as “favorites” to be shared with all. Your custom station can be shared as well. I emailed my wife a link to my station and encouraged her to create a station of her own.

What’s missing
Unless I’m not seeing it, I don’t see any way to take my music ratings with me. Why no export for these user ratings? This is the same thing I wished for with LAUNCHcast. Sure, I can link to a page on Pandora’s website with specific songs I’ve maked as favorites, but where is the export of all the songs, albums, artists I like? This is the fundamental problem with these music suggestion tools: lock-in.

I don’t want to be locked into using only their service because I’ve learned that not all music services are created equal. Take iTunes for example that has Madonna exclusively or MSN which has the AC DC library. I’ve rated nearly 1,500 songs on Yahoo, but why can’t I take those ratings with me?

Anybody know of a service like Pandora, LAUNCHcast, audioscrobbler, etc which does not have lock-in with user ratings and data? For a Flash app, which I’m notoriously critical, I still give Pandora props. And yes, this works in Safari! Grade: B-

• LAUNCHcast a treat for serendipitous listening
• Recommending music iLike
• Use your microphone to try identifying what song is playing
• How to find related music artists with Music Artist Cloud
• Buying downloadable music online still not equal to retail
• Yahoo to make “speciality” audio search