It was my good fortune to attend the Taos Toolbox workshop in 2014, an experience I give my highest recommendation to anyone considering it. Besides the excellent instruction and critiques, I made some wonderful friends. One of them, my roommate, shared my tastes in music and upon coming home, I queued up her favorite Pandora station: Moby Radio. A year and a half later I am still listening to that channel 95% of the time when I’m on Pandora. It might not be the perfect choice for every writer, but it seems to have an excellent balance of instrumentals against songs with lyrics, and I find myself clicking the ‘thumbs down’ maybe once every six weeks.
Pandora has both commercial (at no cost to you) and ad-free (I think it’s about 5 bucks a month now) options. I have pretty low tolerance for ads, and would often switch to iTunes after the second or third round of commercials. But at some point in late autumn I noticed that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard an ad. I figured Pandora was doing some kind of promotion and expected things would go back to normal. Now that we’re in late winter, I’m still wondering where the ads are. I’m wondering, even, if some generous soul gifted me a subscription. Or, perhaps it’s just happy chance. (Seriously, if someone paid for me to have ad-free Pandora, thank you.)
I’ve bought more music than usual in the last year, having discovered new artists that I really like. Whether it’s a glitch or a genuine subscription, I might sign up if/when the ads resume. (But, again, if someone arranged this for me – thank you, thank you, thank you.)
Kelly Horn 