by Wendy Boswell

There's just so much you can do with music discovery engine Pandora: create your own personalized radio stations, find new, original music and share your stations with friends, just to list a few. But listening to Pandora can be a drag on your system, and its song recommendations can go off the rails if you're not careful. This week I've got 15 ways to get better music - and better performance - out of Pandora.


For clarity, I've divided up this article into two distinct sections. The first will focus solely on ways you can get Pandora to run more smoothly on your system; the second on how to teach Pandora to fetch more of what you like, music-wise.

Pandora system tweaks

1. New browser window : In Firefox, open Pandora in a new browser window instead of a Firefox tab. You won't use up as much memory this way. For example, my CPU usage shot up to 39% with Pandora in a tab; Pandora in a window? 16%.

: In Firefox, open Pandora in a new browser window instead of a Firefox tab. You won't use up as much memory this way. For example, my CPU usage shot up to 39% with Pandora in a tab; Pandora in a window? 16%. 2. Shut it down : Turn Pandora completely off about once every two hours. The player tends to get, for lack of a better term, stuck, and doesn't do as good a job finding your stuff the longer it plays. Turning it off and on every once in a while seems to resolve this issue.

: Turn Pandora completely off about once every two hours. The player tends to get, for lack of a better term, stuck, and doesn't do as good a job finding your stuff the longer it plays. Turning it off and on every once in a while seems to resolve this issue. 3.


Put Pandora in your system tray: Another way to streamline your Pandora playin' is the PandoraBrowse, a free Windows only app that sticks Pandora in your system tray for easy access. Just right-click on the icon to bring Pandora up if you need to tweak your stations.

4.

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Pandora standalone: Again, Windows only; download the free OpenPandora and have Pandora run as a standalone interface on your desktop; it hides in your system tray when you're all done. I've used this successfully to listen to music AND have about 27 Firefox tabs open, and haven't had any serious browser crashes and/or memory drains yet.

Pandora music tweaks

5. Rate 5 every 60 : One thing I've found that works well in teaching Pandora to play your faves is take just five or ten minutes an hour to rate songs, yay or nay. You'd be surprised at how much better your playlist will come back.

: One thing I've found that works well in teaching Pandora to play your faves is take just five or ten minutes an hour to rate songs, yay or nay. You'd be surprised at how much better your playlist will come back. 6.


Share your music. Take advantage of the shared songs feature. I have found my best radio stations this way.

7. Request one song. Get more music added to one particular station by requesting one particular song. Adding just one song will add over a hundred songs (on average) to each Pandora station. For the tightest adherence to the kind of music that you want, just try adding five songs to a new station and then listen to it for at least a week before adding any more music.

Get more music added to one particular station by requesting one particular song. Adding just one song will add over a hundred songs (on average) to each Pandora station. For the tightest adherence to the kind of music that you want, just try adding five songs to a new station and then listen to it for at least a week before adding any more music. 8. Add an artist's name. For a broader range of music, you can create a Pandora station with an artist's name. This can add hundreds of songs to your station, especially if the artist has a varied body of work.

For a broader range of music, you can create a Pandora station with an artist's name. This can add hundreds of songs to your station, especially if the artist has a varied body of work. 9. Edit your stations. If you change something in your station and then later find out that these changes have caused your station to, uh, suck, just click on the triangle next to the station name. That will allow you to go in and edit any changes you've made.

If you change something in your station and then later find out that these changes have caused your station to, uh, suck, just click on the triangle next to the station name. That will allow you to go in and edit any changes you've made. 10.


Pandora RSS feeds. Take advantage of Pandora's RSS feeds to find even more music and share your favorites. Your Internet friends can sub to YOUR feeds and then you all can trade your favorite Pandora songs, artists, and stations. You can also find more music by subbing to the Top Rated feeds in your feed reader of choice; this is a great way to find music you might not have ordinarily thought of.

11. Backstage. Use Backstage

Use 12.


Search Pandora profiles. Personally, I love seeing what other people are listening to, because most of the time they have such better picks than I do. Try this query in Google to search Pandora user profiles: site:pandora.com inurl:people. Then just click on any profile that comes up and start browsing their selections. You can add whatever you like to your profile from each individual profile page. A similar query is site:pandora.com inurl:artist, which enables you to look through all of Pandora's databased artists, or site:pandora.com inurl:song, which lets you browse through some of Pandora's humungous database of indexed music.

13. Search for entire albums. Another Google query: site:pandora.com inurl:album . This takes you directly to artist's complete albums, where you can sample songs and save them to your own stations. This is just another way to access Backstage; but I like the Google route better because I can sample artists I've never heard of before.

Another Google query: . This takes you directly to artist's complete albums, where you can sample songs and save them to your own stations. This is just another way to access Backstage; but I like the Google route better because I can sample artists I've never heard of before. 14. Search for specific types of music. And yet another Google query for youse guys: site:pandora.com inurl:album intitle:acoustic . Now, this doesn't work as well as I'd like it to, since you're only searching for the word "acoustic" (or whatever kind of music you're interested in) as it occurs in the title. However, this last tip has a way around that....

And yet another Google query for youse guys: . Now, this doesn't work as well as I'd like it to, since you're only searching for the word "acoustic" (or whatever kind of music you're interested in) as it occurs in the title. However, this last tip has a way around that.... 15. Search for what you feel like listening to. What if you're in the mood for some romantic music, but just can't think of what might fit the bill? Try using Pandora's musical classification index to find what you need. Use this query in Google: site:pandora.com inurl:song "romantic lyrics" "major tonality" . I got some really good results back this way; Ella Fitzgerald, Hill Street Soul, Louis Armstrong, etc. You can combine any of Pandora's musical attributes

What if you're in the mood for some romantic music, but just can't think of what might fit the bill? Try using Pandora's musical classification index to find what you need. Use this query in Google: . I got some really good results back this way; Ella Fitzgerald, Hill Street Soul, Louis Armstrong, etc. You can combine any of Now, the trick with this is that you have to have the list of attributes up in front of you. It would be exceedingly simple (hint hint, Pandora) to plug all the attributes into a database with corresponding "moods"; for example, I'm in the mood to get jiggy with it, so I'd pick the mood "Get Down", which is linked to "Danceable Grooves", "Flat Out Funky Grooves", and "Insistent Backbeats". Just an example.


And one more, just for fun

Now, you didn't hear it here, and this is definitely NOT endorsed by Pandora, but you can rip music from Pandora using a few simple little DOS prompt commands. You can read about how to do this in quite a few places on the webernets; here's the ones that are most user-friendly:

Again, standard disclaimers apply. How do you bend Pandora to your music-lovin' will? Tell us all about it in the comments.


Wendy Boswell is an associate editor at Lifehacker and a big Pandora fan. Her special feature Technophilia appears every Monday at Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Technophilia RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.