I seem to be a hybrid of the two types of listeners. I have two "catch all" stations, Tony's Favorite Music which gets a lot of the songs I like and Estrogen High which is a collection of songs of only female vocals. I also have stations which are based on a single artist or song.

In addition to those collection stations I also have stations where Pandora's song selection algorithm don't really work. One is for songs that feature vocals where both a woman and a man both contribute to the majority of the vocals. The other is a station of cover songs that I add songs to as I hear them on other stations. I also have a station called A List Radio for songs that I've given a rating of A+, A or A-.

I'm most interested in hearing new music these days, so the stations I'm listening to most lately are my Test Drive stations. I have Test Drive, Test Drive 2 and Test Drive 3. I seed each of these stations with a single artist at a time. I use them to hear more by that artist and to discover other music similar to that artist.

The key to my test drive stations is that no song ever gets a thumbs up on them. I always move songs I like on my test drive stations to other stations and give a thumbs down to songs I don't like or already have on another station. This allows me to avoid hearing groups I've already heard and know I like or those I don't like.

As I hear new songs that don't seem to fit my existing stations, I'll create a new station or send them to my Home For Lost Songs station which is kind of a holding station for songs I'll listen to and classify later.

Having three test drive stations allows me to get past the Pandora licensing restrictions so that I can generally avoid listening to a lot of songs I don't like by switching from station to station.

I track the songs I like in an Excel spreadsheet keeping track of song, artist, album, release date, song grade (C- to A+) when I heard the song and what station I assigned it to. I use my Excel spreadsheet to determine how to spend my limited music appreciation funds. I also keep track of artists I want to use for my Test Drive stations on a separate worksheet.

incredible post, tony - I suspected that people would have sophisticated systems for managing stations and negotiating the music genome project, but it's fascinating to see exactly how you do it.

cheers!
mz

I also use a spread sheet both for cataloging my "X" station contents and I use a spread sheet for navigating and sorting large thumbs lists.
I just pop the url into a cell and then I can sort by any sortable column, goto a specific page on a specific list or just page through them by fives tens or for realy large list 50's and 100's

We have a Tricks Tips and Traps column on our group site

http://pandorastations.crispynews.com/forum/show/843

we also have a Wiki. IdeaBox. Share. Explore. Evolve. Listen Now sections as well as voting for shared stations and we are looking at a themes contest to run all year long.

We have initiated a group station as well where all can contribute to designing a group mascot Pandora Identity.

so why not join the party and pay us a visit

all are welcome.

thanks

PJ.

I'm a "mood" station creator: "soft," "not soft," and "pop rock." The first station tends to be more New Age and Jazz with a touch of World; I like to listen to this station when I'm working or calming down for the evening. The second station still hasn't found it's groove, but it leans towards the music I like to listen to when I'm active and doing something (e.g. chores). The third includes pop, rock, trance, the occasional country song (DIE! I just can't seem to kill those), and a lot of female vocalists; this is the music I like to listen to when I'm idle (i.e. driving (if I could get it in my car), menial work tasks, or in need of motivation.) I also have a random "Holiday" station that I started back in Sept and just can't decide whether to delete it or not.

Tips for other listeners? When I first started out with Pandora I went through my Mp3 list and told Pandora all of my four and five star songs. That got everything off to a pretty nice start. My second tip would be to not leave Pandora unattended - it seems to get funny ideas as to what I like and don't like if I wander off for an hour or so.

I find that thumbing down only and no thumbs up gets me the best stations. Thumbing up ends up making my listening "too adventurous"...in other words a thumbs up expands my station too much..thumging down just narrows it. And I'm a mood station builder :)

Pandora..is worthless when it comes to older music....you no before 1990....and there worthless when it comes to classic trucker music and classic surf music.....

hey thanks for all the comments so far - pj, that's great that you've got a group station, and that you're collecting station creation tips - all who post there are welcome to post their insights here as well!

I like the 4 & 5 star itunes strategy as well - hadn't thought of that one, kail.

and brandon, I'm surprised that you feel that pandora has no music from before 1990, and no classic trucker and surf music.

we're always looking for great artists from all eras and genres (and I daresay that we have lots of those already). if you have specific music recommendations, please send them to us at suggest-music-AT-pandora-dot-com.

I create multiple stations. Some I start based on artists I already know, others I create on the fly when I discover someone really great on one of my Pandora stations. I do best when I select very specific types of unusual folk and ethnic music, rather than starting a station based on something more popular. I can start with a popular artist that I like for a very specific reason, but then the station rapidly moves to more "insipid" songs. When I find myself thumbs downing more than twice in a row I let that station alone and move to one that seems to better "hold" to what I want. It's certainly making me think a lot more deeply about what it is I like when it comes to music.

When I create my stations, I kind of like to dissect my good days and bad days. When I have bad days, I usually like to listen to either soft, piano music or really loud stuff that will just make me want to scream. When I have good days, I favor acoustic rock. So I essentially dissected my best days and worst days, and what I like to listen to. So far, I have Ben Folds Radio, Matt Nathanson Radio (mostly for the guitar solos of guys you never hear about, like Monte Montgomery), Barenaked Ladies Radio, Five for Fighting Radio, Rockapella Radio (from last week's column. Amazing band by the way. Gave me a lot of interesting new artists), and a few others.

My suggestion for people who are new to the system is a "go with the moment style". If you could have one CD to listen to for right now, who would it be by, or what song would it have. The energy and feeling is carried remarkably well throughout the songs by Pandora, and it's definitely a mood thing that stems from it. After a few times of doing this, balancing good and bad days, you'll get a bunch of radio stations that are truly good for every situation. Or if you just wanna rock in neutral, the QuickMix was a good idea.

P.S. Name? Blended Notes.

In contrast to brandon's findings, I've found a wealth of older music *and* (instrumental) surf at pandora, and have many stations for each. For a well-defined genre like swing music for instance, typically just a couple of artist seeds per station will build a good listening experience. I've also had good luck with building stations based on certain genome trait(s)- add a few songs having some characteristic that is pleasing. The stations that take the most "work" for me, but are never as satisying, are the ones from artists with unique styles, for which pandora can't find good matchups. Then again those can lead to fun surprises.

I have separate, very defined stations for all of my favorite types of music, from Punk to Ska to Pop Rock, even the Early Punk/New Wave. I've found a lot of semi-old (late 70's/80's) music that I really enjoy.

Not sure if this is the best thread for what I want to add, but I think it is related. A feature I really long for in Pandora would be the ability to narrow in on a segment of an artist's work, especially for rather eclectic artists whose style has changed over the years. If I just create a station around the artist, I end up getting music of his/her eras that I might not like along with that which I do.

Let me give an example. I'm a big fan of the early years of Chicago, the first few albums, when their sound centered around a jazz-rock-blues fusion, the horns were front-and-center, and the arrangements were complex. The Pete Cetera pop hits version of Chicago starting after brilliant guitarist Terry Kath dies makes me puke up little puppies. But my Chicago station gives me more of the latter than the former, probably because they had more hits in that latter era. I know I can eliminate some of that by use of thumbs down, but since i most often listen to Pandora at work where I don't have the opportunity to constantly be clicking on songs, my stations don't get the grooming they need.

So what I would like for artists who span decades and styles in their catalogs is a choice to refine them a bit more. What I would envision would be after I would enter an artist like Chicago I would be given a choice of diverse songs from that artist. I could then either indicate "all Chicago" or choose some combination of the representative songs to show the station which Chicago I'm interested in.

hey mark - looking at your post, I can definitely understand how frustrating that can be - you probably know this, but you can also make stations with songs, and not just artists.

maybe if you seed a station with lots of your favorite chicago songs and none of the ones you don't like, you'll have a different experience?

just a thought,
mz

I tend toward the "One station with everything" approach. I agree with Mark though that the system seems to be overly focused on artists rather than songs. It's not uncommon for me to find artists for whom I enjoy a particular song but the rest of their album (or albums) is less than stellar. Which I'm sure everyone that purchases CDs can relate to. But as I understand it, Pandora vetos artists from your station after two songs get the boot. Unless a particular artist only ever produced two songs, a whole bunch of music has just been written off if the first two don't happen to catch my fancy.

Ironically enough my main station lists "Depeche Mode" as having the most thumbs-downs, which is funny because they are one of my favorite bands. But artists that have been around for a long time get quite a large catalog of music and there are some, particularly from their early years, that I don't care for. And there are artists that have only a single song that I enjoy.

My main station has over 400 songs that I have thumbs-down, so maybe it's my taste in music that doesn't seem to match Pandora's algorithm. I tend towards rock / alternative, but some of my preferences don't really fit - country music in general is not my thing, but to omit the Man in Black just be wrong. Giving thumbs-up to songs I like, though, seems to get the station way off track. Playing a station that just has a single artist seed and no votes in any direction seems to get better results, but then how can I affect the song lineup?

The other thing I see is that for each station, half the music seems to come from the same set of 50 songs. I can vote it around and get a different set of 50, but there doesn't seem to be a way to tell the system "I like this song, but please, once a day is plenty."

My style of creating stations is...well...electic and perhaps a little bizarre.

I have one "catch all" station that I named 'Haley's Favorite Things", where the seeds are any song or artist I liked enough to bookmark (in theory, anyway--sometimes I forget to add things).

Then I also have my 'mood' stations. I've got one called "Dark Vocal Rock", for example, which was originally seeded by Nightwish's cover of Phantom of the Opera, and then grew from there. It mostly plays rock songs with female vocalists that have a sort of 'symphonic' feel to it, although it's basically just focused around rock music with a moody, sweeping feel. I've got several other stations like this that started from one artist I really liked and grew from there.

Now comes the REALLY odd stations. When I "grow up" (that is, once I graduate from college), I want to be a writer. Now, ever since I was a little kid, I would associate certain songs or artists with certain characters or storylines.

This has grown into me having entire stations built around the 'sound' that stories or characters have. For example, I have a character in one story named Mae who's a girl-next-door tomboy type, so her station features a lot of folksy rock with female vocals, as well as some girls-with-pianos type of songs. A lot of the lyrics have lines that reflect strength in adverisity, since that's one of her traits. Another one of my stations for my story 'Dance of Purpose' features whistful love songs in a minor key, since the story is a (slightly melodramatic) tale that borrows from the typical tales of 'star-crossed lovers'.

Sometimes the stations work REALLY well (Mae's station, and Dance of Purpose). Sometimes...well...I can't quite nail the 'sound' for a certain character (one of my character's stations can't seem to decide if it wants to be a dance-music based station, a rock music based station, or a station based on piano-driven pop). Since I have music playing in the background while I'm writing, though, it's handy. ^_^

I'm still working on my stations, but I like to split them into genres. I started out with rock, soft rock, chick rock, blues and country. But as I go along, I’m making more and more stations from songs I hear that I feel would make a good separate station. Like the Black keys for dirty blues, Bleach for mellow rock and Ben Folds for Piano rock.

I like the bears and Squirrels distinction between the Pandora listeners. I started out just making one station, but then I wanted something different to listen to to match my mood. And I like the QuickMix feature!

I've come full circle. I started having one channel that I'd add everything I liked too, but it didn't fit my working moods - so I broke off into the seed station approach and used the QuickMix to get the mix I want.

For example, I have a few stations seeded with a single song that I focus on Thumb-Downing mostly (reworking a lot of them now actually) as I found (same as posts above) that doing a thumbs up brought me too far away from the original seed song.

Then I take those stations and use the QuickMix to merge up what I feel like listening too. Best of all the worlds.

I'm just starting to build stations, so what I've done so far is to create a separate station for each of my favorite artists, and then use the QuickMix to turn them all into a temporary mega-station. Next, I will begin to play with the quick mix to create more focused stations.

One question I do have is, if I create a station with QuickMix that turns out particularly good, is there a way to save it as it's own station? Right now, the only option I see is to take note of what artists I checked for my mix, and then go back and build a station from scratch with those artists. A "Save this mix" option would be a handy addition to the QuickMix menu.

I've been most pleased with Pandora's ability to narrowcast music I don't already own on CD(classical and late 60's) without too much what I call "fading" into unwanted territory. My stations are defined by a few artist's names, where I think (hope) that a few thumbs down will be narrow enough to fence it in. I'm particularly happy that I've been able to keep piano-oriented jazz (Keith Jarret, Oscar Peterson) separate from horns (Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis.) Pandora's jazz and classic blues libraries are excellent. Other stations I defined to my own satisfaction this way are John Fahey/Leo Kottke, surf music, Tito Puente, and Bob Marley, (By comparison I gave up on Motown and Atlantic soul music because I couldn't keep out the bad imitators and "drift" to other genres.)

Although I know there's a mandate to expose listeners to new music, my one suggestion is that Pandora be more sensitive to the historical choices for selected artists, e.g. if I exclusively choose blues from the 1930's I don't want Robert Cray or the Rolling Stones or some newbie blues group popping in. If I'm going to buy something I hear on Pandora, it will be some obscure Jimmy Reed album I don't yet know exists, not a 90's band cover version.

Just started with Pandora. I'm running a little experiment: I've created two stations with the same 10 songs that I like.

One, I will grade very harshly - mostly thumbs up or down.

The other, I will grade easily - more neutrals.

I'm keeping track of the amount of time I listen to each.

After some amount of time has passed (haven't decided how much yet), equal for both stations, I will take a sample (listen to 30 or so songs) from each and see how many thumbs up I give.

Basically I'm trying to figure out if it's better to be picky or open-minded. I'm rooting for the first to win, but we'll see. Should be interesting given other's experiences w/respect to thumbs-ups. I'll report back when I have my results.

Wow there's some amazing ideas in here and i haven't read through all of them so forgive me if I post a method that someone's already mentioned.

I mostly create my stations by artist and genre. I like to pick an artist and create a station around that artist. Sometimes I'll add the one artist and just let it be for a long time. Sometimes I'll start adding other artist right away. But I try to choose artists that sound good together and I'm often inspired by Pandora's choices too.
Each station is a unique experiment. Some I limit how much adjusting I do to them. Some get to be rather large and messy and become broad genre stations.
Just today I created a couple stations based on lists I found in a music magazine. I've also considered doing stations containing song seeds from each of my favourite DJ-Mixed albums, since these songs usually flow well together and are by various artists - see what that sort of a station generates..

I also like to top off my favourite stations with my idea of a witty name based on the artist that started it all. There are even 3 rules I try to adhere to when renaming my stations.
1) It should contain part or all of the name of the artist that inspired the station.
2) It should give some clue as to the genre being followed.
3) It should not contain the word 'Radio' at the end.
Sorry this one is actually there so I, as well as visitors, can make the distinction between which stations have had the most care put into them. Stations still marked 'Radio' are still early experiments and may not survive.
My favourite name so far is: 'There's a Hair Band in my Meat Loaf' Ha! that one cracks me up! It obviously started with Meat Loaf and then I noticed Meat Loaf Radio was playing a lot of Hair Metal from the late 70s through early 90s. "Heh heh! Hair music. Heh! Meat Loaf. Hhehhehe. There's a hair in my meatloaf. hhehehe." I might have been intoxicated.
I feel the need to watch Beavis & Butt-Head now. Goodbye.

I wish I had known much more about Pandora when I started using it but life is what happens when...

Anyhoo, I started with a station based on Joanna Newsom and one based on Bjork. I just let them run without manually adding music to them, just thumbing up or down. Although there are no artists quite like either of them, the one that eventually worked out best was Joanna, mostly because I am more forgiving of folk-ish artists than artists that are supposedly "like Bjork." (I will never forget and possible never forgive the moment I heard Hilary Duff on my Bjork station!)

From then on I added more music to the stations that were slow to please and that certainly helped. So Mary Timony became Mary and P.J. Harvey and Scout Niblett, etc. That seems to work well, but I don't get much use out of the harder stations since I usually play Pandora when I'm relaxing at or near the computer.

Now that I see the many ways to create a station and handle the incoming music, I may have to create new stations to test out these theories. I am really interested in the theory of thumbing down way more than thumbing up, but I am also afraid of getting rid of an artist based on two songs when they could have many great songs (or even just one, which can be worth it) that would fit into my station and my music collection.

At the moment, Joanna Newsom's station has become the closest to a catch-all. There are a range of artists with just a very basic theme: softer songs from artists who generally have an odd voice or a low-fi sensibility. But not necessarily. Most of my other stations are almost obsessive-compulsively specific.

By the way, I wish it were easier to maintain my stations (it can be difficult to erase mistakes made on a station when there are pages and pages of material to look through); I wish I could send music from someone's else's station straight to one of my stations; I wish so many things were different on here, but I also realize that this is the coolest music site ever. Thanks for trying.

I start with my favourite artists. I have very few of them, not more than 6-7, and they are very special to me, they represent the exact way which I intend the music. Therefore anything similar to them will probably sounds good to me.
I tried making radio station basing on songs or a genre but this has given me too wide results and not much accurate ones; the "artists' way" has been working better for me.

my wife and i share one account and split stations. one of mine we kind of juggle 'to the day' and our mood. also, i just added an account for a FaceBook group entitled: Pandora.com - Is Amazing. i thought it'd be interesting to build a station from hundreds of people to see where it goes and how it changes based on requests. plan is not to vote at all as songs play.

and i agree...pandora is amazing. keep up the great work!

Does it have to be bears? Because that one is kind of taken, IYKWIM.

I like keeping my stations separate because there are things I like in one genre that I dislike in others and I want to be able to modify them independently. Also, even though I mostly listen to my QuickMix, there are some times when I just want to, say, listen to some electronica and leave the country music out. It is funny how often songs that belong on one station show up on another-- maybe my tastes aren't as eclectic as I thought.

By the way, love the idea of doing a station based on 5-star itunes songs; I'll have to try that.

I've only been playing with pandora for a week or so now and just found this blog today. I'm enjoying reading people's tips to "point" their stations in the right (or wrong) direction.

Is it wrong to "thumbs up" one of your seed songs? What happens if you "thumbs down" two songs by your seed artist?

These are excellent suggestions!

I came over here as a total newbie, looking for a way to take some of Pandora's suggestions and say "I like that, but in another station!"

In fact, I'd really love for that to be on the Guide Us menu. Or to be able to drag the song's icon into another of my stations and thumbs-down it for the current one.

I'm often happy with the picks I get but they break the mood I'm building up (yes, I prefer to build mood stations).

So consider this a UI suggestion. I notice that Tony posting above does something similar, but doesn't say how he does it. (he says "As I hear new songs that don't seem to fit my existing stations, I'll create a new station or send them to my Home For Lost Songs station which is kind of a holding station for songs I'll listen to and classify later.")

How you do dat, Tony? Besides hitting "thumbs down" and then manually copying the song name to another station?

I'm a squirrel. No doubt about it. But I too was intrigued by the idea of creating a station consisting of the best songs from my iTunes collection. I've done so now - it's called Six Stars Radio, because I have too many five star songs, and so have to keep a list of the cream of the cream of the cream. Something like 10 % of them are things Pandora knows not of, and I've told their suggestion box about them.

Anyway, I wasn't expecting much from this - I have a couple of ten-seed stations, and I've just never much cared to listen to them, even though I love the seeds. But to my surprise, Six Stars is working really well. Dunno if it's the quality of the seeds, or if the variety is just better with 200 seeds than with 10, or what - but I may have to give some thought to becoming a bit more bearish...

And speaking of massively varied stations, I've given a listen to the Play-Listen-Repeat station that mz set up. Uh.... I really can't stand it at all (except for the Gogol Bordello stuff it played, which was fun and unique). I think of myself as having somewhat broad tastes - but obviously, I have a long ways to go. (And of course I know that somewhere out there, someone is shaking their head about the silly stuff I manage to enjoy too. It's a big world. Thanks again, Pandora, for giving me the chance to hear so much more of it!)

- Alan -

I guess I'm a lumper and not a splitter. I've only created only one station and see no reason to create any otehr since my taste in music runs all over the board. I also like lots of diversity and mixed styles. I guess that's why I find most internet and regular radio boring. I also believe, and this clomes from my radio DJing days that most music can be tied together somehow. Doesn't always work but at least it never gets boring.

I really enjoy Pandora - I get a big kick out of the relationships that it exposes, and the way it introduces me to new music. My approach is quite different than those described above. At first I created a few theme-based stations (moody music, dynamic performance, singer-songwriter, etc.), but I found that after feeding lots of songs/bands in and using the thumbs, it obscures the relationships. My preferred approach now is very dynamic - I seed the algorithm with a single song or band at a time, and go where it takes me. I create these stations on a temporary basis - I listen to them for an evening and then I delete them and the next time I log in I try something new.

I'm definitely a one-station girl. I like a lot of diversity in my listening so everything goes in there together, and then occasionally I get things like Cat Stevens followed by Rammstein, which I think is great.

I do have a couple other stations, but they're for things like 'I've never heard this artist before and I don't know if I'll like them' and 'hey, I wonder what happens if I put all the covers of "Paint it Black" that I can find all on one station', not for daily listening.

One thing I've noticed is that you can thumbs up a song, and you can make a new station from that song or artist with just a few clicks, but there's not really an easy way to add the artist to the station you are currently listening to, which would be nice.

One more thing I noticed while reading these blog comments - currently you can put a url to send people to your website, but wouldn't it be nice if instead all of our names linked to our Pandora profiles? I want to go check some of these other stations out!

When I started out I just typed in a few artists and songs I liked.

I have never been really into music before I started using Pandora. Everytime I'm behind a PC (don't have one myself) and I'm in a situation I can turn on Pandora I do. I prefer it over sites like last.fm, because those require you to download things, while Pandora lets you use it real smooth.
I discovered tons of artist that I liked which I never heard before. I already bought 6 albums from artists I discoverd through Pandora.

I'll get back to the subject.
After using several different Pandora stations with usually just one artists feed my stations became a bit loopy. Station A has songs from artists from Station B and B from C and C from A.
That's not strange, since I usually created new stations from artist wich featured in my other stations.
To prevent �nd keep this stuff I created my 'Trying Weird Mix radio'. I began with a few of my favourite artists, but soon I just added all artists I liked or came across. This station has only Artists-feeds btw.
Furthermore I dropped almost all criteria. Only artists and songs I don't like aren't allowed.
All other 'neutral' songs are in there too. I also give them all thumbs up, because otherwise I wouldn't remember anymore If I already heard it or not... Yeah, that's weird, but it's a weird mix radio right? station link is: http://www.pandora.com/stations/26faa790a0e10b94b9005924e8eb2445e8c7587b2172781c
Currently I have over 835 (sheesh!) songs thumbed up and only about 40 thumbed down. It has about 50 artists feeds now.

I agree with Mandy too and I was writing this post while she posted, but I had already added my profile page at the url spot.
Like she says, things like happen in these kind of stations will never happen on ordinary radio.

I remember that I could easily delete a song that shouldn't have had a thumbs up or down easily from the list, but if I have to that now with help of the profile station page that is not going to work easily.

I'm still going to try and make a weird mix with only songs as seeds and see how that works out.
It wouldn't be as diverse as my current mix is, I guess.

Keep up the good work! I think I forgot something to tell, but it will probably come back to me.
Those Podcasts are great too.
I'll stop now...

Well, if anyone's interested in my station, my profile on here is called HaleySings. ^_^

I love the idea of putting all of the covers of a song into one station and seeing what'll happen...I think I'll go try that now....

hey all - what a a wealth of information about station creation strategies... amazong. I've read them all and circulated some around the office here.

keep em coming, and thanks!

m

My station (Turquoise Hexagon Sun Radio) is the only one for me. I use the pop up menu to groom the music as I go along and since I listen to the station all day in work, I can spend lot's of time directing the musical flavour as I go along and it also helps me through the day.

I did spend a fair amount of time adding favourite artists to the station when I set it up and this seems to have paid off as I get a great selection of tunes from my selected artists and the Pandora recommended artists.

Might be a bit straightforward but it works for me. Keep up the good work.

Just for my bonus points:

Call the station creators Lumpers and Splitters.

I am more of a Splitter, but mosly use shared stations.

Love this website guys. I have read some of the previous posts and have picked up some ideas about how to manage my stations. I enjoy "classic" country music. I have found a great mix of artists. Pandora does a pretty fair job of finding great songs but does wander off a little on occasion. I too would like the option of having more songs like my seed artist/song or "this artist only". Does anyone know how to solve this problem?.......Pandora shuts off if I'm not at the computer for awhile. I like to leave it playing for my puppy while I'm at work. He likes classic country too.

Cool ideas up in here! Lots of inspiration...

I'm a squirrel. I'm not quite as organized as a lot of the folks here, but one thing I do a lot is take two artists from very different genres and see what comes out which can be pretty trippy.

The idea of mostly thumbs-downing and not thumbs-upping is really interesting. I've generally gone with the opposite philosophy. I've found throughout my life that i end up liking almost everyt type of music it's just a matter of being in a particular mood to find a groove with a new style. This means I give out way more thumbs up and I have to really instantly hate something and know that it's not a matter of ever finding the right mood to give it a thumbs down. I like to keep things broad, though, because it helps to find more new-to-me music.

Bonus round:
Going along with the genome theme, "Monomers" and "Polymers"... too dry. Seeding a plant breeds "Cultivators" and "Harvesters"... Cultivating the one versus harvesting the many... Mesh them for "Monovators" and "Polyvesters"? Might take too long to explain. What about music? "Beats" versus "Songs" or "Notes" versus "Scores"? Using technology- "Bytes" and "Megs". Food- "Confectioners" and "Smorgasborders"? Mix it all up for "Lyrical Ninjas" and "Melody Czars"- the lone gunman versus the leader of many... Hmmm...Must ponder.

..>Gem<..

It wolud be great if there was not just english language music in pandora. If I were you I'd collect more European artist (the local stars in German, French, Hungary ect.) and play their songs just for the users from these countries. You can define the user's location by the ip adress.
To ask your question: I have only one station.

I'm a bear. I listen to one of two stations, which frequently feature music from the other, or a quick mix of them both if for some reason I can't decide. But I never get bored of these stations because I am constantly finding new music that I enjoy and that perhaps I can explore futher. Thank you Pandora! And I don't mind a short audio ad, as long as it doesn't turn into Yahoo!'s super loud ad every three songs and a 16-second ad while the player loads. =D

Sorry, had to do this:

For the names? In classic styles: greasers and soc's (or however you spell that. Oh, ponyboy)

"Mamas" and "Papas" (Yeah, it works)

"Hair" and "Head" (30 Rock? Me too)

and finally

"Musical" and "Lyrical" (I don't quite know why)

For Lennart re the shutoff problem, I had the same freezeups running Pandora on my older model notebook, and was advised by the staff to try thinning out the thumbs and cutting stations. It was finally cured for good when for other reasons I added RAM up to 512K. Good luck.

I have been experimenting with station mixes for a bit now, and this is is what I have learned:

1. Single artist/song stations can be more difficult to manage than larger based stations, since you are not quite sure where your thumbs up will take your station.

2. An awesome quickmix will most assuredly sound like crap if you take those same seeds and use them to make a larger station.

3. Thumbs up works like fire (spreading quickly and changing everything), thumbs down works like a scalpel (tiny, high precision cuts).

I'm interested in how others have learned to manipulate their playlists, I tend to create stations willy nilly, then thumbs down or move songs to my shape the feel. I constantly make and create new tracks based on songs, artist or blends. I am about to experiment with some new ideas for sculpting sounds, I will be glad to collaborate with anyone interested

I listen ONLY in Quickmix mode, unless I am sculpting a sound on a specific channel. Quickmix works how I want a blend station to work; By not lumping all the sounds from my picks into one "style" and instead playing a random selection from my premade styles. A hybrid form of this style of station would make my day. And a more fine tuned adjustment on the thumbs up...

Hedgehogs and foxes:

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
Archilochus (7th-century b.c.e.)

I also am listening almost primarily in QuickMix mode, and for me it works great. I have about 7 different stations each of which is based around three or four bands that i like who have something in common sound-wise. That way I can keep my moody acoustic indie-folk seperate from my intrumental post-rock if i want to. Of course there is some overlapping that happens between stations since it's almost entirely indie rock artists, but on QuickMix that doesn't matter since it all gets thrown together anyways. I used to be more liberal with my thumbs up, but I've just edited all my stations to get rid of those overlapping songs and artists as well as miscelaneous songs that didn't belong. I'll see if that changes my stations much. When I find new artists that seem intersting i bookmark them temporarily so I can research them further, and then usually delete the bookmark after i've decided if it's worth getting something by them or not.

I bookmark a huge number of songs, and they stay indefinitely. That's because the other part of my strategy is that I buy a CD whenever I find I have bookmarked a second song by the same artist. It's actually quite rare, since Pandora plays such a huge number of unfamiliar performers.

On the other hand, I bookmark artists only to make a statement. (And the statement is, "you gotta hear this!") After a whole year of Pandora, I have 7 artists bookmarked, compared to 20 or 30 pages of bookmarked songs.

- Alan -

It's so interesting to hear the strategy that thumbs down does a better job of focusing a station while thumbs up opens it up to unpredictable directions. My primary station is mostly thumbs up stuff and it tends to get stuck in a rut of songs that - while I'm generally OK with them - are not what I made the station for. Not wanting Pandora to permanently ban an artist or style, I tend to just skip these songs instead of thumbs down.

One feature I would love to see at some point is the ability to tell pandora _why_ I gave something a thumb down or thumb up. For instance, I'm a prog rock fan, but I can't stand the cookie monster screaming vocals that occasionally occur with some bands. When I thumb that song down I'm voting against a specific aspect of the song, but it doesn't preclude me from liking other songs very similar with a better vocal performance.

All that said, this is still far and away the best way to discover new music.

Well, well, well; woods burnin' hot up in here! Interesting tip on the workings of thumbs-up vs thumbs-down. Has Pandora Support weighed in on that?

Pandora support helped me reel in a runnaway station. If like me, you want a very specific genre dbl check your artist and song seeds and delete items that are misguiding. Cleaning up thumbs-up helps too. Seeds rule, thumbz are helpers. Hit refresh in your browser and you get a fresh set of thumbs-down.

I'm a 10 station man myself. Prefer genre over mood. 5 flavors of Jazz (Bebop, Vocalese, Singers, Founders, Latin) and a Holiday Station. Plus 4 "z" stations that are under constuction and sort to the bottom of the player.

I start out with some combination of artist and song seeds, then update artist seeds as Pandora finds me 5 or more songs from the same artist. Weekends are the only time to prune stations.

Ok, up the post chain I'd talked about a strategy to test being picky versus going with the flow.

I've abandoned that - it just felt like more work than I wanted, sticking to the discipline of the station ("hard grading" or "easy grading") I was on.

That said, my gut feel is, I think, consistent with what I hear from many other posts - if you want a fairly defined station as to genre or mood, you need to be pretty picky. If you prefer serendipity and hearing a mix, not so much.

Which when I step back and think about it, seems like, "duh." I guess the algorythm does a pretty good job of following your mood at the moment, so it's up to you to keep your mood in check, if that's what you want.

Interesting thought: maybe Pandora can, in a back-handed way, help you understand your feelings. Your mood station getting off track? Maybe you're feeling different than you were when you started building / turned it on...

I find this interesting because I think many people (myself included) have a hard time really seeing how they feel at the moment. Society doesn't really value that. (Does anyone at your office job ever ask, "how do people feel about that?" Hell no - they'd be afraid to hear genuine answers. Not that they'd get many...

I'm a semi-odd bird in terms of music. I like musicians with a similar philosophy who don't necessarily over bands with the same sound. So I find small labels with artists I enjoy and throw as many as Pandora recognizes into a station. I haven't gotten much success with song seeds except to lead a station in a certain stylistic direction. I'm trying to get more picky about what I thumb up for once I get past like 100 thumbs up in a station, though.

I like stations that do a whole bunch of different things but have fairly steady moods, though. I do find a real chronological bias, sometimes especially in the rock music. If you put in a 60's rock band, you get mostly other 60's rock bands.

I've created multiple stations for specific types of (similar) music and I listen to them all with QuickMix.

What's most lacking about QuickMix is the missing 'Move This Song to a Different Station' option.

I want to listen to all my stations with QuickMix and sort out what belongs where as I do.

(I'd also like the ability to Thumbs-Up a song for another station without Thumbs-Downing it on the current station. I guess I want a 'Copy to a Different Station' option (in addition to 'Move').)

When you say something like this: I am a hybrid of the two types of listeners. I have two "catch all" stations, Tony's Favorite Music which gets a lot of the songs I like and Estrogen High which is a collection of songs of only female vocals. I also have stations which are based on a single artist or song.
... But I'd have to agree.