Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Pandora vs. Last.fm

I had, until recently, been unaware of the existence of the music service Last.fm (thanks Brett for showing me this!). Basically, Last.fm is the direct competitor to Pandora. As many of you know, Pandora has been my online music service of choice for creating customizable and adaptable radio stations. So when I heard that there was another service doing the same thing, I was excited to check it out. Let me preface this post by saying that there is already an excellent posting written by Steve Krause concerning the differences between these two services. If you want the nitty-gritty details of what is different between these two services, check out his post first.


While I think Last.fm is a great service, I am still going to stick with Pandora. I say this lightly, as it is only a personal preference. It really depends on how you like to listen to music and what fits your musical personality.

Something that Steve Krause touches on in his article is the way music is picked and added to the radio stations you create. Pandora relies on comparing musical characteristics of a song to pick music that it ‘thinks’ you will like. Musicians at Pandora listen to each song and then diagram it into ‘genes’. These ‘genes’ are the qualities of the song that give it shape and form. Examples of these qualities are speed, volume, voicing, key changes, tonal quality, genre styling, etc. On the flipside of this, Last.fm uses social nuances to classify and suggest music. This means that songs are picked for you based on how society in general groups them, not how they musically correspond. As a musician I prefer Pandora because it is not influenced by social likes/dislikes. It looks at the raw music and does not account for popularity.

As far as aesthetics and interface go, both have their strong points. I tend to opt for the simple, straightforward approach of Pandora. Pandora can be accessed through any web browser, does not have standalone software, and every part of the service can be accessed through one static panel. Last.fm is much more robust in the options department, but borders on chaotic and confusing at times in my opinion. There is somewhat of a learning curve getting used to it’s interface. There are many, many ways this service can be used and there is also standalone software that can be downloaded to run the service outside of your browser window.

Both seem to be amazing services and for those of you not yet utilizing one of these, I’d strongly suggest you check them out. However, this blogger is sticking with Pandora for now.

1 comment:

iamwebdan said...

i think last.fm is better because it allows direct interaction between listeners. comment sections on songs and albums are great for getting additional information. pandora is cool to discover new songs...but it is half and half for me. i get a lot of bullshit thrown at my ears on pandora. lastfm lets you track your listening tastes from your itunes.