Since I discovered Pandora, our gaming groups using nothing but free Internet radio during our D&D sessions. Time-saving, easy to use, typically free, and perfect for mood-setting – with a dash of customizing, as needed.
Some of my friends still use Pandora at their place, though since they became more ad-heavy this year (including increasingly frequent audio ad interruptions, which are the worst, most jarring offenders), I’ve now put Jango in my top Internet radio spot – for any kind of customized music station, in and out of D&D. No annoying, constant audio ads like my once beloved Pandora!
If you try Jango, I think you’ll instantly become a huge fan and never go back, whatever music you enjoy and want to hear.
James Horner Radio
How do you create a D&D radio station on Jango? Fire Jango up – it’s free! – and then type Mr. Horner’s name, or whatever musician or artist whose music or scores give you the fantasy background music feel you’re after. Notice the “Similars” section just below the artist’s name on the display. Go ahead and click it to explore.
For example, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Danny Elfman, Howard Shore and Hans Zimmer all appear as similar artists to James Horner, and their music will also play on your new radio station – without you having to do a thing!
You can if you want, however: simply thumbs up or thumbs down music to further customize your station. You can thumbs up or thumbs down single songs or even an artist entirely. Especially useful when the occasional too-familiar or too-sci-fi score pops up. I love Jean-Luc, but I don’t want the Enterprise showing up and firing upon our enemies in the middle of our Realms or Dark Sun campaign. (Though it could make for a cool, bizarre crossover adventure! Or maybe not…)
For our games, I love musical scores from great action, adventure and fantasy movies like Conan, Gladiator, Braveheart, the Batman franchise, Avatar, Lord of the Rings and others. So if you’re familiar with these movies, the composers and artists listed above are probably quite familiar to you. This type of music has tremendous range and yet still stays as background music, helping set the mood for your campaign’s setting, themes and adventures.
Please Don’t Stop the Music
Standard Action has an excellent article on streaming Internet radio, where you, too, can learn what scrobbling means when it comes to online music! Simple. Brilliant.
Plus if you missed out my first article touching briefly on D&D music, including the pure awesome that is the Roll a d6 music video, stop everything and go watch it!
Who Do You Listen To?
Are you on board with Leonine Roar and Standard Action when it comes to music for your game? How much Internet radio do you use in your games as background music? Who are some of your favorite artists?
Kilsek
Hey, thanks for the link! I didn’t know about Jango until I wrote that post and you commented. Thanks for that! Ever since I tried Jango, it’s pretty much replaced last.fm as my choice for streaming radio. Jango has a great Android app, and it doesn’t ask me to resume listening every twenty minutes during a long game.