I have written about Pandora many times, my favorite Internet radio station. If you have not tried Pandora (available in the USA and UK), it allows you to “personalize” the music it plays and is a free service. You simply create a “station” by choosing an artist you like. Pandora helps you find new music based on your old and current favorites.

The only thing I am not crazy about is that usually Pandora needs to play from within your browser. I have in the past I recommended two free desktop applications that allow you to run Pandora without your normal browser on a Mac, PandoraMan and PandoraBoy (this one even allows you to use your Apple Remote).

Now comes PandoraJam that extends Pandora to stream around your house (requires an AirPort Express), record individual tracks as high quality AAC (iPod compatible) and add them automatically to iTunes with album art. PandoraJam supports Growl notifications for showing track information, has submit songs feature to Last.fm (known as Audioscrobbling), allows for keyboard shortcuts, and includes Instant Messaging status updates (Adium, iChat, & Skype). PandoraJam $15 (free trial), is a native Cocoa application that requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

PandoraJam is a snap to install and get music playing from Pandora in seconds. The test recordings I made were instantly put into a “PandoraJam playlist” (one for each Pandora station you have) it created with the album art. Too minor complains is the album art is a bit small (this is what Pandora streams) and it does not fill in the Genre in the ID3 tag (not a big deal). PandoraJam allows for recording in AAC which are iPod compatible in bit rates from 128Kbps to 256Kbps. There is a preference for moving incomplete or skipped recordings to the trash which is a nice touch.

I used to stream Pandora to the Airport Express units (AirTunes) I have around my home using Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil 2 (OS X or Windows XP/Vista) which is $25 by itself. PandoraJam has streaming built-in making the $15 it costs a nice deal.

Support Pandora.com
Pandora is a fantastic music service. Please support it. You can listen to their service for free but you should consider purchasing a subscription – it’s cheap and just think of the hours of musical pleasure you’ll get in return. Not only is their personalized radio service the best out there, but they have been vocal campaigners in the SaveNetRadio campaign, fighting against those that want to destroy net radio. Pandora is currently only available in the USA and UK, so your support will help in expanding the service to eventually reach millions of music lovers, wherever they are in the world.

PandoraJam is award 4 out of 5 Paws

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