After three years, my Pandora station is finally awesome.

And, despite my better judgment, I think it was worth it.

So, a few years ago, I discovered Pandora. I'm not sure how I did it. I think it was a friend of mine emailing me. I loved it. Previous to that I was using LaunchCast, and it was really crappy. It didn't help that I was listening to primarily crappy music at the time, too (everyone has a Linkin Park phase, I'm just the only one man enough to admit it). Nonetheless, LaunchCast was crap, and there were too many commercials, and you could only listen to a certain number of songs a month, if I'm not mistaken.

Then Pandora helped me see the light of streamcasting. It was beautiful. Just one problem: the same thing as happened on LaunchCast was happening here--I only liked about half the songs that played. I learned of the thumb up and the thumb down, and sometimes I'd listen just to my station just to get more nuances of my preferences in there. It also was amazing because as my tastes were changing, so was my station. Then I knew it had come: it was time to start a new station with just my standard tastes (and a few curveballs thrown in there for fun). That was about a year and a half into my Pandora experience, and in that time, I've gradually shaved my "songs-I-hate" ratio down to a manageable 8% (I made that number up). I actually listen to my station for fun now, not just out of a duty to create something of it.

It's great! I'm stoked!

That might mean bad things for all of you who are just starting out, though. Remember to write your congressman and tell them to support the rights of internet radio.

My Pandora station can be found here.