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.