Art of the iPhone

You may have noticed Pandora Radio‘s (free, iTunes link) frequent appearance on the iTunes top downloads list, and there’s a reason for it. Simply put, it’s an excellent app that has earned a spot on our Best of iPhone Apps list. If you’re constantly on the hunt for new music, this is the app for you.

You’ll need a free account to use the Pandora Radio app, although your settings and stations will transfer over if you already have a web-based account. If you are new to Pandora, you can set up an account directly in the app or visit Pandora.com. The app has a variety of preset stations for just about any genre. Seriously, you can find everything from drum & bass to deathcore metal to flamenco — and everything in between.

If you hear a song you like, you can bookmark it for later. Under the booksmarks tab, you can buy the song from iTunes, create a new personalized radio station with similar songs or email the song to a friend. The customized radio stations are much like Genius in the iTunes store — pick one song and the Pandora Radio app will add it to a playlist along with similar songs. As the songs play, a thumbs up or thumbs down helps improve the selection. The iTunes tagging functionality works well, and it had no problem directing me to the correct listing in the iTunes store.

Unless you’re playing with the app, the iPhone will auto-lock after a minute. It becomes kind of a pain to awaken the iPhone every time you want to skip a song or change the station, so you can turn off auto-lock in the app’s settings menu so the screen will remain lit. This will drain your battery much faster, but if you are near a power source it is much more convenient.

There are a few inconveniences, but nothing that detracts from the overall value of this app. There is a delay of a few seconds when skipping between songs, and the app takes a little while to become responsive when the iPhone is unlocked. The Pandora Radio app includes ads, which you can turn off temporarily by tapping the ‘x’ in the corner. The biggest bummer is that your music stops if you have to leave the app to do something else on your iPhone, but your song will pick up where it left off when you return.

Overall, I’m sold on the Pandora Radio app, and we highly recommend it. The app has very few hiccups and the song selection is impressive. You’re bound to find some great songs thanks to its recommendations, and it’s just the right app for when your iPod playlist is feeling a little stale.

Pandora Radio is a free download from the iTunes App Store.