Thing 17 - Music Streaming & Sharing

Thing 17 is another "thing" that is not new to me. I have used Pandora and Slacker quite a bit on my iPhone. When we take road trips, my husband and I always sync our phones to our car stereo so that we can listen to one of these on the trip. Slacker was the first one we used, and I liked it because I could skip songs I didn't like, and I could also "ban" a song I didn't like so that it would never play that song again. Still, the Slacker stations weren't that different from regular radio stations besides the lack of commercials, in that you pick a station that plays a genre of music and you may like some songs and not others. When I discovered Pandora, it was a whole new world. I really like that it creates custom stations based on what music you like. I have to say I think it is very smart technology. The station I use most often is one that plays Cowboy Mouth type music. Basically it ends up being a lot of 90's rock, but I have to say I like almost all of the songs it chooses for me, so it seems very intuitive. I haven't bought a cd since I got my first iPod several years ago. And now that I've discovered music streaming to my iPhone, I can't imagine a reason why I would ever buy a cd again. I see that the library has already reduced the cd collection and it seems to be on the verge of disappearing altogether. There is just no way to beat the free, 24/7 accessibility of music streaming. I think the cd as a library material to be checked out has all but died.