I’ve long been a user of the Internet radio station Pandora.com. I was immediately drawn to the freedom to create stations based on my favorite artists and the ability to completely fine-tune my station specifics. Being one of the first of its kind, it truly has revolutionized that way we listen to music (both online and offline).

Recently, Pandora added a feature called “genre stations” – which basically means each genre of music (electronica, hip-hop, country, etc) has it’s own radio station. This feature is not necesarily new; they simply revamped the service.

What really disappoints me, however, is the lack of effort put in to the “Electronic” category. The categories they give you are:

• Club / Dance
• Dubstep
• Dance Pop
• House
• Chill / Downtempo
• Trance
• Drum & Bass
• Dance Essentials
• Indie Dance
• Breaks
• Techno

As you can see, these “genre stations” lack any diversity, are redundant, and quite frankly bastardize the EDM genre. Aren’t “Dance Essentials” sort of like “Club / Dance” songs? Electro/house producer Deadmau5 is listed in multiple categories, causing confusion. Furthermore, I shuddered when I saw the word techno. Are you serious right now? A “techno” category?

Hopefully as EDM (Electronic Dance Music) gains more popularity, someone within Pandora will do a little homework and rework these categories. For now, anyway, you’re better off creating a station based on a particular artist you enjoy and upvoting/downvoting each track until the software learns what you like.