Learning about music

I'm currently subscribed to Napster, Rhapsody and Pandora.

When I first heard about Pandora I got really excited because there have been so many times I was listening to a song, like, for example, Going To A Go-Go or Tears of a Clown by Smokey Robinson and I would be focusing on the drums or tamborine and so want to hear more songs that had the exact same quality. I thought Pandora would offer this but so far I haven't been able to get it to do that. It's interesting because both Napster and especially Rhapsody have been great for helping me find new music.

I'm still looking for music for THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WICKED. I stumbled onto the PJ Harvey song "Shame" from her newest album and that led me to "Free" by Cat Power and then "When The Levee Breaks" by Kristen Hersh. When I tried using Pandora with these songs as starting points, I got stuff that didn't mean anything to me. Like with "Shame" I really like the accordian in the background and also the very simple drumming. And "Free", although it is totally different in many ways, feels very similar to me. I think it's the really simple, percussively strummed guitar that reminds me of the drums on "Shame" . So, unfortunately Pandora can't seem to find this connection.

Also, if anyone wants to write back to me, I'm looking for a way to embed playlists in a blog in such a way that no matter what service someone may use, that playlist will launch their app (be it Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo, or whatever) if its not already launched and then populate their player with those songs. That way when I'm writing about songs, like above or in the post sad/violent music, I can just list the songs and folks can hear them easily instead of having to go track them down on their own.

Write to me at james@soulsurfer.com if you know how to do this.