OK but you said

> What all these algorithms seem todo is play songs that other people listened to after or before the song you requested. Or they just play something in the same genre.

and I am pretty sure that, under the hood, this is not what they are doing. They really are using individual attributes about the song (e.g., tenor vocalist, minimalism, heavy distortion, etc.) to try and find something that sounds the same.

So I think your real complaint is "I don't think the algorithms are good enough yet, even though they are trying to do exactly what I want".

The problem is that it is very expensive for Pandora to onboard new content, as compared to a pure recommendation engine approach. They'll never have the depth of catalog to make it anything more than a curiosity.