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I could never get into Pandora, but probably because my musical tastes are strange. I mostly listen to parodies, so when I insert stuff like Weird Al or Monty Python Sings or Capitol Steps or even King Missile, they really confuse the genre classification engine.

These days I mostly listen to curated streams, because I can't be bothered to come up with my own playlists. So usually SomaFM.com (Groove Salad, Lush, and sometimes Secret Agent or Defcon). I also like to hit http://sleepbot.com/ambience/b... on occasion , it can be really weird sometimes.
Also I'm a bit surprised to find I have a soft spot for "female vocal dubstep" on youtube, but maybe that has something to do with the wallpaper pr0n.

Anyways, I used to use streamtuner + streamripper to, uh, "timeshift" a few hours' worth of streaming radio feeds so I could listen to them in the subway. These days, I usually just find the things I really like on youtube and download them with Tubemate, and then buy albums on Google Play if I really really like certain artists. But the only reason I spend money on Google Play is because I don't want to install any other music store app, and I can't fully remove Google Play.

Can't stand the Google Play auto streams that they throw at me, though.

Do you have a music streaming rig?

I really like Clementine as a front-end.

On the back end, I do have a little shoebox ION server with a RAID1 library. But I don't really enjoy maintaining all that myself; I really prefer having streaming music playing from some human-curated feed. http://somafm.com/ has a lot of great streams, as does http://di.fm/ and http://sleepbot.com/ is also quite unique.

I'll occasionally use streamripper to record and m3u tag streams for, uh, time-shifting on the car or subway. It also makes a good icecast proxy, so I can have several clementine players around the house connected to my central box, so the house is just consuming one stream from the site, but I can walk from room to room and have everything playing at just about the same place.

eh, I find my own favorite music too distracting, then I start thinking about other stuff and skipping forwards and messing with the playlist. So I find it the least effort to just have a good internet radio stream going on in the background.

Most of them I discovered here on Slashdot, even.

Groove Salad on http://somafm.com/ (many other streams there worth trying too, most of my favorite songs are from Lush, but GS is the best coding stream)

Sleepbot on http://sleepbot.com/ for a wide variety of background ambience that's not necessessarily music

Nectarine http://scenemusic.net/ for video game / tracker stuff

Those are my go-to options for keeping my tempo up through the long nights.

Meh, I get that when I start hyperventilating. You should just have your blood pressure checked.

I kinda thought that I didn't like music either, then some slashdot post recommended one of the streams at http://somafm.com/ . Since then I've actually spent some money on an album or two. Though I still don't have an "entertainment" budget set aside to speak of.

Also want to put in a plug for http://sleepbot.com/ambience/b... , which is generally "not music", at least not as you know it.

Bottom line: we aren't perfect.

Whenever I see or hear something like this, it reminds me of a card from a very unusual 'tarot' deck a friend of mine has. It shows a hand-drawn not-quite-round circle above the text: "This may not be a perfect circle but it is a perfect..... What ever it is"

Obviously, they're not running: http://sleepbot.com/

(It also drives my wife crazy (in a bad way), which is a nice fringe benefit)

Rock on, bro. I have to admit I actually care very little about music... I mean I like to listen to it, but don't really go out of my way to look for stuff and learn about bands. So the streaming radio stations like http://somafm.com/ and http://di.fm/ have fit me very well - it's more about the DJ chosing a good selection of things in a particular genre, and I just tune into the stream that suits my mood. I really can't be bothered to manage my own playlists myself.

That said, I have picked up an affinity for some artists in exactly the way you describe from listening to some of the ambient / electronica streams, such as Jon Hopkins, Nathan Fake, and Zero 7. Haven't been able to find much of them in record stores, I guess that means I've managed to pick up an obscure taste in music? Anyway, I'm very happy that there's still some good diversity in the types of streaming radio available on the internet. I really can't stand to listen to any of the popular radio stations in most US metropolitan areas anymore, and even get bored with what I've heard from the somewhat broader selection on satellite radio pretty quickly.

Speaking of Digitally-Imported, remember to check with your foreign friends overseas to see what's interesting. I'm deep into a Ukrainian group ( http://fleurmusic.com/ ) right now, but most of their albums are virtually unobtainable in the US. I'd characterize them as something like a mix of Tori Amos doing Celtic stuff, except (insert "in Soviet Russia" joke here) you need a whole bunch of very talented women to make a successful band (would TaTu be big anywhere if they were independent artists? Well, the whole lesbian act aside).

Finally just want to point out http://sleepbot.com/ as a source of very quirky ambient / background ... sound (most stuff playing there doesn't really qualify as music).

There used to be a mock Tarot deck called Morgan's Tarot, which had a card that said, "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." Dealing with lawyers is like that. -- Tim O'Reilly's patent article

Morgan's Tarot, copyright 1970. Lord of the Rings, completed in 1948.

Geez, you'd think he'd know better. Or maybe O'Reilly only deals with Unix wizards? (Who, from my experience may be subtle but are generally nice ....)