I’ve told you before about my love for the mobile versions of internet radio services Slacker and Pandora. Due to music licensing restrictions, neither service can play music on demand, and each service picks songs for your user-created custom stations in a slightly different way. The song choices I get on both services are usually right on the money. But recently I got a couple of unexpected results.
My main custom station on Slacker is built mostly around ’70s-’80s classic rock: Styx, Journey, Foreigner, Scorpions, Rush… you get the idea. I’ve had that station for a while, so I’ve done enough favoriting, banning and skipping to give it a good idea of what I like. Imagine my horror when my morning commute was marred by the sound of my least favorite REO Speedwagon song ever. REO Speedwagon is not one of the artists I selected for my station, and even if I had, the song “Take It On The Run” would have been banned straightaway.
Let me digress. Back in high school and college, I was definitely a fan of REO. Stuff like “157 Riverside Avenue,” “Roll With the Changes,” “Riding the Storm Out”… that stuff. I was quite eagerly awaiting the release of Hi Infidelity. It was one of the biggest disappointments of my young life. Song after song of unmanly whining. Ewwww. Just ewwww. In my mind, even to this day, the worst offender was “Take It On The Run.”
I may have been too stunned to click the button to ban the song. I don’t really remember, so there is a chance I will have to repeat the sad experience at least one more time.
It didn’t take much digging to find out why Slacker thought I might enjoy the song. Seems that there is a double live album from the “Arch Allies” tour that Styx and REO Speedwagon did together in 2000. Who knew!
Pandora’s surprise for me was a bit more pleasant, given that it wasn’t from Hi Infidelity. It even sort of played into my obsession with imaginary bands. I would have never expected any of my Pandora stations to serve me up a song by Hannah Montana [warning: link auto plays music/video]. Nor would I have expected to love the song, “If We Were a Movie,” [warning: link auto plays music] but I do!
This one wasn’t that hard to track down either. The station I was listening to was built around Liz Phair, and this song actually has a similar style to one of the songs on her self-titled album. You know, the second one where she went all power-pop instead of singing about blow jobs. Wait, she still sang about blow jobs. Anyway. The choice did make sense.
Much better surprise from Pandora than from Slacker, but I still love both services.