Pandora's Cyber Box

Technology may have made it easier to access new music, but it's also taken a lot of the fun out of discovering it. Internet music services such as Last.fm and Live365.com provide user-programmed streaming radio with varying degrees of success, as the selections are often limited and of questionable quality. Still there's hope. Take for instance Pandora, the Music Genome Project's "music discovery service," which uses a massive library of licensed, cross-referenced music to program streaming playlists based on a single song or artist. Type "Fat Boys" into the search field and you get songs by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock, Afrika Bambaataa, Queen Latifah, and Eric B. and Rakim. If we have such sophisticated technology today, just think of what the future will hold. Pandora Media founder Tim Westergren explores "The Future of Music" at 7 p.m. Thursday at The Magnolia Theatre in the West Village, 3699 McKinney Ave. Admission is free. RSVP to tour@pandora.com.
Thu., Sept. 21, 7 p.m.