A great way to listen to music

*Disclaimer - I'm not intending to come off as an "advertisement" but the subject on which I'm going to discuss has left me feeling very appreciative. In short for the verbally challenged reading this - I'm not being neutral here.at all.*

There's this great site for listening to music called www.pandora.com - it's been around for a while, but I never really used it. I have to say though, the more I use it the more I'm impressed with it. Pattern matching algorithms and music has never been sexier. Way superior to other pattern matching music stations. It's usually quite spot on within a couple of songs. What I like most about pandora is that it doesn't play common top 40 numbers much. Most of the time, it plays obscure artists, and really helps with the whole broadening your musical horizon experience.

Going into the "technicalities" of this website (one of the things I really enjoy doing is evaluating UI designs. I dunno, it's something I picked up at UBC, and these days I do it almost involuntarily) I have to say, this site is a beauty.
Apparently there's been a heavy mac influence with the player resembling the polished steel finish of quick player. The registration process is very painless. enter your email address as your user id and give a password. Thats it.

Their interactive process is very appealing and I find that they keep the user suitably engaged. Textbook UI Designing in my opinion. I think they used Liatt's law (which for the unintiated is used to calculate the optimum spacing between "buttons" on a human-computer interactive device)! They have this cool option called "why are we playing this" (obscure) track which gives a pretty fascinating description of YOUR musical tastes. I found out things about me I didn't know. lol

The more I tinker with it, the cooler it gets. Unfortunately, coz of copyright laws, this service is available only in the US (as of now). Hope you guys get to check it out!