If you’ve ever been on a ten-minute car ride, you’ve come to that sad but unavoidable conclusion: the radio sucks. Commercials are obnoxious, the mix is never quite right, and antennas in the computer age are like phones that only make calls—they function, but you’re not going to show one off to your friends. Thankfully, in 2000, entrepreneurially minded musician Tim Westergren delivered us from the evils of analogue radio with Pandora.
A free internet radio service based on Westergren’s innovative Music Genome Project, Pandora stations are set up by the listener, and therefore (in theory) only play music the listener wants to hear. The lowly-musician-turned-empty-corporate-suit who started this whole phenomenon will be imparting some of his wisdom onto the Georgetown population on Thursday, October 15, at 5 p.m. in the fittingly high-tech-looking Hariri Building’s Lohrfink Auditorium. I hope he accepts complaints during the question-and-answer portion, because I’d like to know why every time I change the station my computer is briefly transformed into a talking, full-page billboard for “Couples Retreat.” Space is limited, so RSVP through the Georgetown events calendar ASAP.
