Music has always been prevalent in my life, from waking up to a friendly tune from my radio clock, or singing bollywood songs in the shower, to learning how to play the guitar and the clarinet. My parents clearly remember the day they bought me my first iPod. But for me, it is now a blur. The frenzy of the iPod is as good as dead to me. I don’t even remember the last time I bought new songs. That is not because I’m too lazy, but because of the revolution of the internet radio, Pandora.
The most exciting part of writing this blog was actually listening to JaiHo on Pandora. The song is just amazing and I don’t even need to buy it. I have downloaded the application on my smart-phone, my iTouch and have also forced my brother to get it. Listening to music is so ingrained in my life that I cannot get away from Pandora, just as I couldn’t from my iPod when I first got it. Pandora has completely changed the way I listen to music. I no longer have to wait for YouTube to load or spend money on iTunes. It is so much quicker and easier to listen to what I want. But the most important aspect of Pandora to me is that I can even listen to bollywood songs. Having lived outside my home country for more than five years, I have lost touch with my roots. Yet Pandora has brought me back to who I really am.
I was able to connect with your essay especially because I need a new site to listen to music. I also stopped using itunes to listen to music especially since back home itunes is not very popular. Itunes does not have Brazilian artists nor songs. the problem with youtube back home is that I am not able to sometimes see certain videos due to restriction laws. Someone already told me about www.groveshark.com to listen to music but I guess I'll check out pandora as well.
ReplyDeleteI think what you have written really can relate well to our modern day society as even in the last class of Media studies i couldn't help but hear two students talk about how they downloaded over 200 songs this summer for free and seemed very proud of that matter. It seems that technology is a strong factor of making media more widely available, maybe it is something we should discuss in class more.
ReplyDeleteI have also just started to use Pandora too, and I found it really awesome. Pandora is not just easier and quicker to use, but it also customize your interest of song. Instead of searching new songs from youtube or itune 100 top list, now I can just turn on my Pandora stations and listen to my favorite genre of songs. It really changed my way of listening music.
ReplyDeleteI can completely relate to what you expressed about Pandora, free music and the benefits that it has to those of us determined not to pay for music! I recently discovered the craze of Pandora but I did not realize that you could also listen to Bollywood songs, this will definitely enrich my time listening to Pandora. Apart from discovering something new while reading your blog entry, it was also interesting to see how much the world has moved away from purchasing and listening to CDs, to downloading and living in a free digital world.
ReplyDeleteI am totally a fan of pandora as well. It reminds me of the undeadness of radio (see Cathy's blog entry for the last week: BabsonBao.blogspot.com) in the age of the video. While the artifact you pick is fascinating, I would like to see you zoom in much closer and compare it with other music-playing media, make some vivid observations about the social and cultural significance of this medium (not just how it subjectivesly makes you feel). Giving social historical background of some object is always a great way to make your analysis intriguing.
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