While I tend to agree in general, I've actually found pianobar much less distracting than the Pandora web interface. F5 (my hotkey for Terminal.app), n, Alt+Ta

While I tend to agree in general, I've actually found pianobar much less distracting than the Pandora web interface. F5 (my hotkey for Terminal.app), n, Alt+Tab can happen without me really thinking about it, whereas the web interface requires firing up the browser, locating the "Next" button and clicking it. So I guess I can see this being an improvement if all you're looking to do is skip to the next song. If, as you say, you browse through your albums, etc, then I imagine this would be just as distracting.