As I’m sitting here working on a web design project and pondering what new little tidbit of computer help I can offer you folks, I realized something. I’m using one of my favorite services right now and I haven’t told anyone about it for a pretty long time.

I love listening to music while I am working at my computer. Now, I can’t just crank it up to 11 and blare away all the time, but I do enjoy having some music going in the background. My trouble is this: sometimes I just can’t decide what to listen to. I don’t have a huge music collection, (only about 1200 songs in iTunes which sounds like a lot but that’s only about 100 CDs worth) and I don’t really have the money to build a massive collection, as much as I would like to.

But I like finding new music. Mostly because the vast majority of what is played on the radio today is garbage. But how can you find something that you might like?

This is where the cool part comes in. Have you ever heard of the the Music Genome Project? Didn’t think so. I hadn’t heard of it either until a few short months ago. Here’s basically what they have done. This group of people have gotten together and they listen to music. They analyze everything about it, from rhythm to tonal quality, use of instruments, lyrical themes, and more stuff than you would ever care to know about. Then, they have taken all this music used common attributes to group different artists together. And then, they put it into a streaming audio player, and called it Pandora.

Here’s how Pandora works: You enter in a song title or an artist that you dig a lot. Pandora will search through the huge database of the Music Genome Project and find songs that are related to the artist or song that you entered. And suddenly, you’ve got your own internet radio station playing songs that you (more than likely) will be crazy about.

For example: I have an Oasis station in my Pandora. Clicking on the link entitled “why did you play this song?” (pretty straight to the point), I get this answer. “Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features electric rock instrumentation, repetitive melodic phrasing, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, a vocal-centric aesthetic and major key tonality”.

Whew! Who knew that all that was wrapped up inside of an Oasis song? Actually the song I was listening to was “Take me as I am” by Tonic. Never heard of these guys. But I’m digging it. Why? Because their songs are stylistically similar to Oasis, and I dig Oasis.

Go ahead. Try it. Head over to Pandora and put in your favorite band. And if something plays that you don’t care for, you can just tell Pandora you don’t like it. It won’t get offended. It will appreciate your constructive criticism and move on to another song. Pretty cool stuff.

And if I’m not mistaken, you can even purchase the songs if you really like them. Either through iTunes or AOL Music. If I recall correctly. Or just listen and enjoy the music. Great stuff. And you are using your computer. For something fun!

You can’t get any better computer help than that.