Diplomacy and Democracy in the Office.

THEN: Remember the first iPods? I do. I bought one for about $400+…(must’ve been nuts). The first generation iPod was a slick, 10GB hard drive…with an earphone. I still have it in the box it came in (in case anyone wants to buy it). It was small, and HEAVY! It would pull your pants down to the floor. No kidding. It happened to me once while running in the rain to my car.

Portable, digital music had arrived – music that I wanted to listen to. No more lugging around CDs or a Walkman that skipped. My daughter, who’s a freshman at Cornell this year (brag), uses a new Video iPod and her Mac for “BIG” storage….and the tiniest iPod Shuffle for her mobile listening. Have you seen how tiny that thing is? Amazing.

Now that traditional radio is practically dead, enter digital radio. Remember XM? It came and went…or rather, merged with Sirius (of which i have in both cars). I’m getting tired of Sirius now…don’t like it anymore. For some reason it plays the same old stuff over and over. So, I’m through with it.

I then migrated to web radio stations….iTunes Radio stations (not bad); AOL radio; I could go on for hours.

NOW: Enter Pandora(.com). It changed my listening life.

Pandora is digital radio that allows you to choose your “type” of music by allowing you to choose artists that you like . Then it plays music similiar in taste and creates a “station”. You can choose several artists and make a MIX the “stations”. You get 40 hrs of listening time per month for free, or pay a nominal fee to listen to continuous worry-free music. These days we listen to Pandora in the office. Before Pandora came along, listening to the music you like was nearly impossible. People used their headphones, or played their computer music so low that they couldn’t hear it. Today, everyone can select ONE artist they like and include it in our QuikMix of all our choices.

This affects my driving experience too. Now that I’m discarding Sirius Radio, I now plug my iPhone into my car stereo and enjoy PANDORA radio in my car! I can’t remember the last time I played my CDs in the car!

Oh, yeah….things have changed forever. But, it’s a good change….or at least I have to believe it.

Yeah, I’m still a little bit “old school” and enjoy my LPs….but if you step back and take notice the new options of listening technology we have at our disposal, it can literally AMAZE you. I don’t take it for granted.

So, get out there and enjoy the music…on your iPod or on Pandora or whatever….enjoy.

Now, go groove a little.

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