And since the original Napster, I’ve hated finding and maintaining a library of digital music.

So over the last few years, I’ve played around with various streaming radio stations, and between the selections of music and audio quality, I’ve never been very happy.  That is until I stumbled upon Pandora the other day.  I couldn’t be happier.

Pandora takes all the guesswork out of things.  You tell it a favorite band, and it selects music with similar traits.  For example, the song I’m currently listening to was selected “because it features hard rock roots, major key tonality, mild rhythmic syncopation, electric guitar riffs and a dynamic male vocalist.”  I’m not sure what all of that means, but I like it!  Pandora found music I forgot about that I loved, and a few bands that I’ve never heard of and really enjoyed.  It’s quite impressive.

A side effect of this is that my productivity has skyrocketed.  Maybe it’s just the music selection, but I feel like I’m back in college in the basement working on my programming assignments.  I’ve been cranking out code and it’s been awesome.  Somehow, having background music keeps me from getting distracted by all the OTHER distractions around the office and lets me concentrate on what I’m doing.

Apparently Sam has known about it for quite a while.  He even uses it on his iPhone.  I’ll have to kick him square in the nuts for not telling me about it sooner.

That bastard.