WoW: Pandora and Grooveshark (my favorite things #6…and a half)

typography canvas by tenderbeasts on etsy

See my previous favorite things… thing #1 – dafont | thing #2 – firegestures | thing #3 – babycenter | thing #4 – allrecipes | thing #5 – w3schools

I am in the midst of scouring my house from top to bottom — cleaning, reorganizing, etc. This process happens about every three days and hasn’t been deemed complete since the birth of my son two years ago…

So, the cleaning must go on, but the housework can seem almost fun (or at least less like drudgery) with the right music. At very least it can drown out the sing-songing and wall-thumping upstairs that tells me that naptime isn’t turning out very nappy today… 🙂

Enter things #6 and #6.5 of my favorites… online music players Pandora and Grooveshark.

Pandora has been a popular internet radio site for years now. I personally have been listening for about 5 years… Pandora got me through ever finals week study/cram session in college 🙂 Just put in a song or artist and Pandora creates a “station” of songs/artists with musical similarities, such as tempo and beat and music genre (and many other factors, stemming from the Music Genome Project).

Then, you further customize the station by telling Pandora which songs you like and which you don’t, and you can add other songs to the station’s base to add variety. You can also choose from one of the many genre stations and further customize the station from there.  Create multiple stations and listen up to 40 hours per month on your home computer or mobile device,  or upgrade to Pandora One for unlimited ad-free listening and other bonuses – $36/year.

Update: Pandora has
lifted their 40-hour listening limit! Now you can listen as much as
you’d like for free! You can still pay the $36 to upgrade to Pandora One
so that you can use the desktop application and have fewer ads and
timeouts, plus higher quality audio. 

I’m (very) new to Grooveshark, but what I’ve seen, I really like! Grooveshark offers some of the same features as Pandora, such as selecting and then customizing a genre station, but with Grooveshark, you can listen to any song at any time and create your own playlists. You can listen as much as you’d like on your computer, upgrade to ad-free Grooveshark Plus ($6/month), or upgrade to Grooveshark Anywhere to have Grooveshark on your mobile device ($9/month).

So, what song is stuck in your head today? I’ll be honest… numa numa is getting me through today. 🙂 

Lu (or Lorene if you prefer) is the mom of two sweet little things (except on the days that they aren’t) and the wife of a singing and dancing elementary teacher. She is the proud author of this weekly Wednesdays on the Web (WotW) segment here on Housewife Eclectic and spends the other days of the week blogging about crafts and whatever else comes up at just Lu.