Welp, I'm using Pandora again

A number of years ago I gave up on personalized music streaming services. I had used Pandora for the longest time, but tried to remove reliance from any service that required an account and a proprietary app, in the name of privacy. I opted to use streaming radio stations with open source apps that were privacy friendly. On Android I most recently used Transistor and on Linux I most recently used Shortwave. Both great, simple applications.

But in the last couple years I've banned some Christian Nationalist bands from my ears (Skillet, Seventh Day Slumber, Manafest) and listening has gone from relaxing to frustrating. I've felt like there's an abundance of these bands' songs that have hit up my normal stations lately, and I'm honestly just tired of having to change stations.

So I gave up.

And last week I decided to look into services that would let me block artsists. And Spotify has that feature. I tried the service for all of two days but I didn't really like the auto-generated playlists, plus banning songs from playlists required the phone app. I couldn't ban things from the desktop.

So I opted for Pandora. On my phone I keep the Pandora app in my phone's private space with no location access and behind Mullvad VPN. On my desktop I'm using Pithos, which allows me to easily ban songs right from my system tray.

Praise and Worship has replaced ChristianPowerPraise.net.

Christian Rock has replaced ChristianRock.net.

Christian Hard Rock has replaced ChristianHardRock.net.

And Today's Christian Hits has become my playlist when the family and I are in the car together.

And, what the heck, since Pithos supports scrobbling to Last.fm I'm doing that now.

I'll be toying with scrobbling through Turntable in the future as well.