I have two iPods. Two broken, out-of-warranty iPod paperweights, and neither of those was the first to crap out on me. I mean, I used them a fair amount, but three failed hard drives over the last 3-4 years? C’mon. So I’ve resolved not to buy another iPod, which means I’m looking for workarounds for my music fixes at home, in the car, and at work. At least at work, I’ve found that Pandora meets my needs nicely.

The concept is straightforward: enter the name of one or more artists that you enjoy and Pandora will stream music by that artist and others like it based on similar song elements and the feedback of other listeners who enjoy the same artist. You don’t like a song, you skip to the next. You can even rate songs and artists thumbs up or down so Pandora can hone its selections based on your individual preferences. Mostly I treat it like a satellite radio station and just let it rip. I normally only skip something if I actively notice that I dislike it.

In practice, I find that it does an excellent job of picking music similar to that I’ve given it as my favorite artists. Pandora claims to examine nearly 400 attributes of every song it adds to its database, so I guess I should not be surprised that they are pretty good at it. You can create as many stations as you like, so the functionality is similar to playlists.

Oh, did I mention that IT’S FREE!

Pandora is Very Highly Recommended by all of us here.