If you have a high-speed Internet connection (DSL or faster) and you like music but are frustrated with radio stations that play the same music over and over again go to Pandora.
Pandora has a team of musicians who analyze songs for tone, sound, tonality, etc. I think they call it the DNA of music. Then enter a song or artist you like and Pandora Compare your DNA to other tunes or artists with similar qualities. best of all, starts streaming songs to you for free. You can then rate them as “approved” or “approved” to show the database what you like. This doesn’t seem to work too well for me, but then I put in another song that I like and things go back to normal. This is a great way to learn about new artists, and best of all, it’s free—as free as your Internet connection anyway.
Now the downside is that Pandora, due to licensing restrictions, it works more like a radio station than a CD. For example, you can’t play a song and there is only limited ability to skip songs. However, you can change the “stations” and create new stations as often as you like.
An advantage or disadvantage, depending on your point of view, is that you can easily click on the menu when a song is playing and go directly to the Amazon page. The danger here is that you suddenly find yourself wanting to buy CDs you didn’t even know existed before. I warn you, the temptation is great!
I am a big fan of amazon. I buy almost all media on Amazon. This might not be the most frugal option from the start. However, I buy almost all used CDs, books, and DVDs, and Amazon has the largest used marketplace I know of.
This is how I work it. As I have mentioned before, When I see something I like, I don’t buy it right away. I put it on a wish list. Amazon makes it very easy, of course. Then after some time (usually a month) I check the wish list again. If I still want it, I keep it on the list. If not, I delete it.
Now with used CDs and books, two sellers will often try to underbid each other. In this way, they can make prices very low because they get the impression that buyers only buy from the cheapest seller. So if you look at your wish list every day, sometimes you’ll see used prices drop quickly. The reason is that Amazon sellers have an easy way to see if they are currently offering the lowest prices and many of them want to be the lowest on everything. When this happens, you are at a Dutch auction, so you have to buy before someone else does. I wish it was possible to set limit bids on Amazon just like on the stock market. That would be the most amazing thing!
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Originally posted on December 23, 2007 at 16:27:00.
