Well, Bert, here is my experience. I have a Stevie Ray Vaughan station on Pandora. They play a few of his songs, dispersed with Albert King, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and many other "blues" players. The trouble is that they sound nothing like him. So I put the good old thumbs down for them, and keep listening. They get closer, but they don't add enough people like him, and try to give me too wide a variety to listen to. If I want variety I will create a new station.
Now in Slacker I can ban artists and love artists in such a way that on my stations (Tommy Emmanuel_1 as an example) I can pick out of a list of artists which ones I like. I can also choose which songs and ban songs I don't like. The choice is now up to me and not whomever sorted through the music's genes.
In the end, I listen for different things than many people. I am a guitarist and, as such, listen to certain things in the music, and some things I like in a different way than most people. I hold nothing against them. However, I still feel that I get more of the music I like through Slacker, and less songs that I want to skip.
