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Pandora vs. Last.fm round 1

I’m late to the party, I know. These two online music providers have been around for some time, and while have known about them I’ve never really taken the time to understand them. I don’t have a large music collection managed through iTunes; I’d say it’s about average sized, and I go through phases where I would add a lot of new music for a few weeks then add nothing for weeks. So new music discovery is often sporadic, and for the last year or so I have left the task to podcasts like All Songs Considered and those compiled by some of my favorite DJ’s. I used podcasts because they are easy; iTunes manages them, downloads them, removes them, and transfers them to my iPhone seamlessly. I tend to do most of my listening while working and for some reason I could not get Pandora to play in Firefox or internet explorer while in the office. I blamed our security policies but never really spent much time trying. I also did not try last.fm as Pandora has always been explained to me as the simpler to use service of the two. I didn’t want to install their plug-in to only find out I couldn’t listen at work.

Yes, I am aware they both have iPhone apps and I could stream stations all day long, but that really isn’t a good solution for me. First, due to multi-tasking limitations I would spend a great deal of time switching back and forth to the music app and second, I see these recommendation services as “garbage in, garbage out”. Meaning the user actually needs to spend some time rating songs to get a benefit. Switching from the computer, unlocking the phone, and rating a song is a distractive process.

The other day for some reason I visited Pandora in Chrome and it worked (the sites were not blocked, in FF and IE there was a flash security error with the player). So I’ve been spending the last few days giving both Pandora and Last.fm a try. I’ve also gone ahead and Scrobblized my iTunes pay history for Last.fm.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to give these two services a good try, and see if I can discover some new music and more importantly if they can offer a fairly passive way to enjoy music. Maybe I’ll get that much closer to picking up a Sonos system to use Pandora and Last.fm with.

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Posted in Technology on January 20th, 2010 Taged with , ,

Comments

  • Guest
    Unfortunately (fortunately?), there are plusses and minuses to both.

    Last.fm is prettier, free, has a better music selection, allows "playlists", has a free desktop version… but is a bit complicated and clunky as an app.

    Pandora is simpler, and allows multiple "stations under a single user account.
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