Pandora vs last.fm
Web radio is really coming into its own, and two services are really at the top of the heap (though others are also popular). Here are my thoughts about these two services:
PandoraFor several years, I’ve been an off-and-on Pandora user. Fueled by what they call the “Music Genome Project” Pandora has a massive catalog of songs, each categorized by over 400 attributes, such as tempo, lyrical content, etc. Users identify artists and songs they like, then songs that are similar according to the Project play together. I put together a few decent stations over time you can check out:
I like Pandora’s abilities and its flexibility to also work on nearly any device, including iPhone, Web OS, Crackberry, Windows Phone, and more.
last.fmAll that being said, something interrupted my system a few months ago. Microsoft’s XBOX 360 introduced Pandora’s big competitor, last.fm, into its Dashboard interface. I jumped in and have been impressed with it, but in a different kind of way.
last.fm’s approach is less scientific and more glamorous. The interface looks very Web 2.0, with a gorgeous library of photographs for each artist that appear online, on mobile devices, and on XBOX 360 as your music plays. If Billboard had been created in 2010, I think it would look more like this service, complete with charts and the like. Users who search last.fm for an artist or song are greeted with an invitation to play ___(search syntax)___ radio, which amounts to the same effect as Pandora. You can check out my personal last.fm profile here, or just take a glance to the right of this webpage.
The Verdict
That being said, Pandora appears to have a deeper and more accurate catalog. My attempts to make a trance Christmas station in December failed miserably with much work on last.fm, but succeeded on Pandora in about 20 minutes. And more often than Pandora, last.fm will sneak in a track that makes me go “ummm…where did you come from?”
But for all its accuracy, Pandora lacks in having an open API for others applications to use it. last.fm on its various platforms recommends artists and has smashing artist pages to tell you more about the musicians. Think MySpace with web radio and without the ugly interfaces MySpace never got over.
So for me, the choice more often than not is now last.fm. Pandora is good for a more definitive sound, but last.fm is for the true music junkie with a more robust offering. I would expect last.fm will catch-up with its catalog, while Pandora appears to be content to be the most accurate service of the two.
You can give your thoughts about this below. So, any thoughts about these or similar services?
