Wish you had a personalized music station that would play exactly the kind of music you want, without obnoxious radio announcers and interruptions? How about your own personal jukebox, playing any kind of music you want at the tap of a button—rap for one mood, techno for another, jazz for another, opera for another, and so on? And what if it played you music that you’ve never heard before, but that fit right in with your tastes?
Stop wishing. You’ve got Pandora built into the NOOK Tablet. This free, fabulous music service may forever change the way you think about and listen to music.
You may already know Pandora from the Web; it started life as a web-based music service. But it’s expanded into Android as well, and now you can use it on your NOOK Tablet. Head to Apps and tap the Pandora icon, and then sign up for an account. If you already have an account, just sign in once you’ve downloaded and installed it.
Once you’ve got your account set up, the fun begins. Tap the Add Station button at the bottom of the screen, and then type in the name of an artist, a song title, or a composer that’s closest to the kind of music you want to create a station for. As you type, Pandora lists possible matches. Tap a match, or keep typing until you type in the full name. Then Pandora goes about creating the station for you and starts playing the music.
As the music plays, a graphic of the album from which the song is taken is displayed, along with the title of the album, the title of the song, and the name of the artist. Beneath that is a slider that shows you the progress of the current song. (Unfortunately, you can’t move forward and backward through the song using this slider; it just shows you the progress.)
Note
If you switch to something else on your NOOK Tablet while you’re listening to music on Pandora—reading a book, say—Pandora keeps the music playing. To make it stop, tap the small Pandora icon in the Notification bar, and then tap the Pandora notification that appears. That switches you to Pandora. Tap the stop button to stop the music.
Want to know why Pandora chose the current song for you? Tap the little information button to the right of the slider, and Pandora gives you the details. You may or may not understand what it’s telling you, but it’s well worth checking out. For example, when playing the Tom Petty song “Love is a Long Road,” Pandora might say it chose the song for you because “it features rock song structure, a subtle use of vocal harmony, a vocal-central aesthetic, extensive vamping, minor key tonality, electric rhythm guitars, a dynamic male vocalist, and many other similarities identified in the Music Genome Project.” What “extensive vamping” means is anybody’s guess...point is, Pandora usually succeeds in playing music you’re sure to enjoy.
Note
The Music Genome Project is an attempt to understand music at its most fundamental level, based on its core musical components—its “genome.” It’s the core of Pandora’s technology.
At the bottom of the screen is a set of buttons for controlling Pandora. The buttons are fairly self-explanatory. The thumbs-down button tells Pandora that you don’t like the current song. When you tap it, the song stops playing—and Pandora has learned something about your musical tastes. Based on that, it stops playing songs with some of the characteristics of that particular song. The thumbs-up button tells Pandora that you like the current song, and so it plays more songs with its characteristics. The middle button lets you bookmark a song or artist. You can’t use these bookmarks on your NOOK Tablet, though; instead, you have to head to the Web and click Profile. From there, you can see the artists or songs you’ve bookmarked, and use them in a variety of ways, such as getting lyrics, seeing similar tracks, playing a sample of the song, and more.
The other two buttons are the usual controls for pause/play and skip.
To switch to another Pandora station, tap the My Stations button at the bottom of the screen. Tap any to play it. If you have a long list, scroll through it as you would any other list. Tap Edit, and you can remove any station from the list.
