Pandora v. Last.fm
So the web is all atwitter about Pandora, a new music service based right here in the Bay Area. Pandora asks you to type in some artists you like and then measures descriptors of those artists against others in the Music Genome Project then creates a playlist for you based on both. The interface is a neat little flash window featuring the album cover art, name of song and band. In a pull down men, you can say you the love the song, you don’t like it, or ask why Pandora selected it for you. I heard about from my friend Lucia who correctly describes it to me as “relentlessly addictive.”
Until now, I’ve used Last.fm and been fairly satisfied. I describe both of them as No-nonsense Launch. Launch.com is Yahoo’s music program that has a similar rating-then-suggesting set up. Except it only works on a Windows system. Which is just stupid. But Last.fm and Pandora don’t care what you’re using. Which is the opposite of stupid.
Last.fm just redesigned their site which is pretty snazzy yet doesn’t quite solve the difficulties I’ve had with it. You still need to download a plug-in for iTunes or whatever your music player is so that what you play gets added to your Last.fm playlists. And since Last.fm works on a stream through your computer’s music player, it’s only as good as the strength of your Internet connection. In a wireless cafe, for example, it’s pretty haphazzard.
Pandora has eliminated many of these problems but lacks the community features of Last.fm. You can’t create friend networks or listen to their radio stations (well, unless they send it to you specifically). But Pandora is only a few weeks old and is most likely planning for this sort of thing in the future.
Last.fm is 3 Euros a month (about $3.75) v. Pandora’s planned $8 a month. Both serve up great music but at this point, Pandora wins on ease of use. I need to see more to decide entirely though. I’m just glad this kinds of thing is around, which I consider one of the great gifts of the digital age. I’m quite sure now that I will never run out of good music to discover.
Pandora is in very new Beta right now and is invitation only. But if you’d like to try it, email me, and I’ll invite you.
Reader interactions
8 Replies to “Pandora v. Last.fm”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Hey Kevin,
I’m really glad you found Pandora and are giving it a listen. It’s been a long and winding path that brought the Music Genome Project (5 years in the making) to the moment when we could launch a direct-to-consumer solution. We’re having a great time hearing your feedback now that we’ve finally been able to make our baby public. Thanks for listening,
Tom Conrad
CTO @ Pandora
PS: just to make the currency conversion clear, a year subscription to Pandora is $36 US – $3/month US.
Hey Kevin,
I’m really glad you found Pandora and are giving it a listen. It’s been a long and winding path that brought the Music Genome Project (5 years in the making) to the moment when we could launch a direct-to-consumer solution. We’re having a great time hearing your feedback now that we’ve finally been able to make our baby public. Thanks for listening,
Tom Conrad
CTO @ Pandora
PS: just to make the currency conversion clear, a year subscription to Pandora is $36 US – $3/month US.
One more little thing, you can find your friend’s stations from within Pandora by clicking the little triangle next to “Create a New Station” and choosing “Find a Shared Station” from the popup menu. This will let you view the top 20 stations on Pandora and search for your friend’s stations by email. No need to wait for them to send you an email. 🙂
Tom @ Pandora
One more little thing, you can find your friend’s stations from within Pandora by clicking the little triangle next to “Create a New Station” and choosing “Find a Shared Station” from the popup menu. This will let you view the top 20 stations on Pandora and search for your friend’s stations by email. No need to wait for them to send you an email. 🙂
Tom @ Pandora
Thanks Tom. Now that’s what I call service.
Thanks Tom. Now that’s what I call service.
erm, actually we charge $3 a month (too, ha). also I wonder how pandora can deal with the bandwidth issue? are they on-the-fly trasncoding or what?
as for adding music to your profile goes, our plugins report every song (CD, mp3, whatever) you listen to on your computer or ipod to us, to build your profile. so you don’t have to answer questions about every song, as we just get 20,000 off you and then figure out what you like 😉
let’s see what happens . . . welcome to the recommendation radio space pandora!
erm, actually we charge $3 a month (too, ha). also I wonder how pandora can deal with the bandwidth issue? are they on-the-fly trasncoding or what?
as for adding music to your profile goes, our plugins report every song (CD, mp3, whatever) you listen to on your computer or ipod to us, to build your profile. so you don’t have to answer questions about every song, as we just get 20,000 off you and then figure out what you like 😉
let’s see what happens . . . welcome to the recommendation radio space pandora!