I talked about Pandora Radio a couple of days ago and what it brought to the scene, so I thought today I'd compare Pandora to the better known Last.FM service.

Last.FM is a social internet radio station where you can interact your friends and share what you've listened on Last.FM. The choices in your station are often generated by what others deem similar to the band you inputted to start the station. Users can tag the songs noting styles and similar bands to help generate the station you want to listen to. The one thing that Last.FM has over Pandora is the desktop client and the ability to tie in programs like iTunes into your recently listened to list. Last.FM is also better for learning about and hearing new unsigned bands. Last.FM allows for bands to upgrade to an artist account to post their songs on the service for others to listen to. Because of this its a great service for new bands to get their music out there for the masses to hear.

Pandora, while having some social aspects to it, doesn't yet match the full social experience that Last.FM gives, but thats fine, it brings a lot to the table on other fronts. First, Pandora bases your station on similar sounding artists from your choices rather than what other user's are suggesting. This provides a more accurate playlist when compared to user tagging which could be completely off from what you want on your station. Pandora also allows you to put multiple artists into your stations for the algorithm to create your playlist, and it even allows you to do mixes from multiple stations if you want a little more variety. This differs from Last.FM where as far as I know you can really only choose only one band to base the playback on.

Both stations are great services and provide a good selection of songs and artists. I don't think either station is dramatically better than the other. Both have their strenghts and weaknesses, and both have their advantages over the other. So right now I would have to call the battle a draw with both being the winner. Both have iPhone apps for users to stream the music from the cell data network. Both have a pretty extensive library, and both generate pretty good stations.

So, which is your preferred internet radio station? Is it Pandora? Is it Last.FM, or is it one not mentioned here?

Tags: thoughts, music, pandora, lastfm