AOL Radio & Pandora on iPhone

I just love AOL iPhone Radio and Pandora iPhone, Pandora is on the left, here.  They are both apps for listening to music on your iPhone.  I love my iPhone, as anyone who knows me will attest.  Recently, as a sort of birthday present to myself, I was considering getting satellite radio, mostly for the 80\’s station(s) I could then pull in my car.

However!  With the addition of the AOL iPhone Radio, I can pull down free, streaming AOL radio from a 3G iPhone (I don\’t have a 3G yet, but I\’m now planning on it).  So, with a little $18 dongle thingie (I got a new non-fm-modulator, those things are all worthless in LA) I can pull in internet stations for whatever type of music/talk I\’m into at the moment and all for \”free.\”  I, of course, use the term \”free\” loosely in that I have to pay some form of mobile bill, it might as well afford me other luxuries as well as allowing me to communicate remotely with, primarily at this point, my mother.

Pandora is a little more nuanced.  Basically, you put in the names of artists, songs, or composers you enjoy and Pandora plays those artists and then suggests other artists and songs and what not that you might like using something called the Music Genome Project.  This is not unlike Last.fm.  With this app, you can find new music, but you can\’t really pick a genre like \”the \’80\’s\” which is really what I wanted most of all.  So, its cool, but not as cool as just listening to random songs you know were vetted at one point by the brilliant public of the \’80s.

So, I\’m excited.  It should be sweet, once I get my 3G iPhone tucked away somewhere.  In the meantime, I can use the radio on my wifi at work and at home (I\’ll watch TV at home, silly).  Woo!  I\’m nerd-excited, can you tell?