a pretty detailed write up I did about the company Pandora. I visited them and photographed their offices last week. - Thomas Hawk

Thanks for taking us inside Pandora. Just switched back after an unsatisfactory stint with Last.fm. - amzam

Pandora is on FriendFeed as well here: http://friendfeed.com/pandora... - Thomas Hawk

I like your taste in music Thomas. Nice read. - Simon Wicks

I really liked Pandora when I could get it. Unfortunately they've since stopped the service outside the US due to licensing reasons. I'm using Spotify now which is also a great music service and you have complete control over your playlist (but not as good recommendations). - Niklas Morberg

Great write-up Thomas, thanks... I was amazed to read that they actually buy and rip their own CDs. For non mainstream stuff (and the music from India, as in your post) I could understand this, but you'd think that for a large percentage of music it would be more efficient (and cheaper) to buy and download on-line. - TranceMist

TranceMist: Bandwidth costs, maybe???? - Roberto Bonini

I think ripping the songs probably is the fastest and easiest way to deal with them. They have bar code scanners that pull all the information down. By ripping them themselves they probably ensure quality high bit rate copies. They use customized software that they wrote to do this and it's probably part of their inventory system as well. - Thomas Hawk

Hi everybody... Thomas, thanks for stopping by last week it was great to see you and the post turned out really great. @TranceMist believe it or not the license attached to downloads typically precludes you from using them in any commercial setting. - Tom Conrad