Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Favorite Internet stations

Pandora is free.

Yep, that is why I use Pandora, it is free.

For my electronic music fixes, I listen to the following (all 128kbps or higher):

A lot of stuff from SomaFM, Chillout radio, and for some retro synthpop & industrial SDX synthetic experience, and more chillout stuff from Powernet.

Here's some good smooth jazz stations as well:

Smoothvibes, JazzMusique, SmoothLounge

I ended up with the Roku Soundbridge. I believe the Squeezebox has a few more features, but I've been very happy with the Roku. I even saved myself $100! So I've been programming all these radio stations in it and am slowly in the process of ripping all my cds to an external hard drive. I love this thing! Personally, I find ripping all my cds to a hard drive less tedious than trying to label them in my 300 disc changer.

The other gadget I bought (to solve having to dig out cds for the bedroom system) is the RCA Lyra Wireless Transmitter. This is an excellent solution for listening to *anything* that's playing on your pc!

Sonicfox, Those are some great finds. I have a Squeezebox and couldn't be happier as I'm sure you have also discovered the joys of having your entire collection on a hard drive. Have not used my CD player since it arrived.

One thing that always confuses me though is how to 'harvest' the url link to play internet radio stations on my Squeezebox. Sometimes I can right click the 'listen' link and use the 'properties' url but sometimes it only give a web page and not a music or playlist that I can use.

Any tips?

Larry

A little late to this thread.

I recently switched from a Squeezebox to a Sonos setup. I love both setups, but the features and convenience of the Sonos is what got me.

That said, I am a fan of Pandora as well, and have recently been spending time with Rhapsody.

For the Squeezebox users that have asked how to save an Internet Radio station that can be played via the SB3, or SB2 for that matter:

From your Slimserver machine, right click (or left click for those of us that use a mouse reversed.)the stations link to the desired stream and save it to your playlist folder. This will place an "m3u" file there. Rescan your playlists, go to your Squeezebox and listen. Enjoy!

I finally registered with Pandora last night and started experimenting a little. I think the missing piece to getting it to work with with SB was to rescan my music list. I'll have to try that tonight.

Evidently the first time I came across Pandora, I only saw the subscription piece and not the free option with ads. Now if I could only get it to play/find the music that I like. I put in Jimmy Buffet and got Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. Not sure how they made that stretch. In any case, I'll play with it some more tonight.

I'll have to try Sonicfox's suggestions too.

Stymie

Stymie, Squeezebox (SB3) handles Pandora natively but you have to register you SB3's PIN # with Pandora in order for it to work. And I may be wrong but I think that in order to get Pandora to work with your SB3 you need to subscribe since they can't plaster ads all over your SB3 like your computer screen. At least after your free trial that came with the SB3 is over. Any way it's only $36 a year....and beats the hell out of Satelite Radio which just sucks and is 4 times as much.

The Internet Radio thing is a different story. You need to save the streams "M3U" file to your playlist folder then rescan and you should be good to go.

Just signed up for the Pandora free trial through SB3. Couldn't be easier from the SlimNetworks web page. Just click the Pandora button, register and start your music station.

The one thing I noticed was that a few options are missing from the SlimNetworks page that are present from the Pandora web age. Namely the ability to add an artist or song to your station. But you just have to sign in to the Pandora web page with the same user name you got from SlimNetworks to get to those options.

I started with Fourplay as the artist to base my station on and so far so good. A few way too slow and mellow bits but otherwise a great selection of music I have never heard, which is the whole idea I suppose.

I also figured out the internet url thing but may not need it with Pandora, or any other music for that matter.

If anyone has trouble with SB let me know. Im not an expert but might be able to help with the tricky bits.

A quick update - I think Pandora is truly getting better at picking the music I want. I got rid of few really solw songs and it has picked up the pace a bit and seems to really be scoring for me. Cannot explain the Jimmie Buffet to Frank Sinatra segue but give it time it just might surprise you.


Larry