Mar 08 2007

Yahoo LaunchCast

I have been totally in love with Yahoo LaunchCast for about a year and a half but I realized I never blogged about.

I have tons of MP3s and albums but every now and then you just need something different. Yahoo has lots of free internet radio stations from the usual themes (Today’s Biggest Hits, Pop, Rock, Country, whatever you are into) and then they have seasonal stations. They had about 4 Christmas stations we rocked the entire holidays and in the Summer we were totally addicted to the Summer Party station. They even had a Halloween station in October and they just debuted a Spring station today.

They also have really random things like show tunes, doo wop, spoken comedy, film scores, really anything you are into

The best feature about it, though, is that with any free Yahoo account, you can have your own radio station (it has commercials, but only 1 every 10 songs or so and some are amusing so I don’t mind them). When you sign up, you can rate a few artists to give the station an idea of what you like, but what works even better is to just listen to the pre-set stations in the beginning and rate the songs you hear. The more you rate, the more you train it.

My stations will play me cheeseball pop, a country song, bon jovi, Under the Sea from Little Mermaid, a song from Spamalot the musical and then Elmo all back to back. Its like the perfect mix for me! I listen for days straight and never heard a song I don’t like or a repeat. And I have the weirdest taste in music ever! Imagine the possibilities if you are normal!

If my station ever starts to stray, I take a day and listen and rate a preset station to get it back on track.

It will also play you new music based on your ratings. If I like a certain band, they will play me new music for another band that other people who like my band also like.

Now, with the paid account, you can set "moods" if you are in a very dance music mood or something. But I am too cheap to pay for things.

Also, you can search for certain artists and rate them on the site if you want to make sure their music comes up. I had to do this to get my dose of Weird Al because he didn’t appear on any of the stations I usually listen to.

Another thing you can do is select other radio stations to influence yours. If you had similar music taste to me (not that anyone does but let’s pretend) you could pick my station as an influencer and it would skew your tastes appropriately.

Anyway, we don’t get regular radio in my house and I feel like regular radio stations have too many commercials and over play songs so this is really the perfect option for me as I sit and work.

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