Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Peklo — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:43:12 -0000

uuuuuaaa... Too late to cast my vote... Last.fm gets my vote, well immaterial since it won the poll :)

Some in the office say, I should be on their (last.fm) payroll, as an evangelist :)

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Shelley — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:00:19 -0000

I have tried both Pandora and Last.FM and prefer Last.FM for their larger selection of music and flexibility -- I am not required to listen to a song I don't want to simply because I have skipped 3 others songs that hour.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

oishiiTea — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:24:48 -0000

It is not available to me so I vote Last.fm.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

aluminumfence — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:17:27 -0000

I use pandora because it is available as a free app on my blackberry too, am also a member of last.fm but voted for pandora because of the blackberry...

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Flavio — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:41:20 -0000

the site redirect to mynextmusic. Maybe another location block?

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

coxy — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:37:26 -0000

I just found out that Spotify isn't even available in the US. Sucks to be them!

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Flavio — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:34:24 -0000

Spotify is another local service and there's no reason to consider it as Mashable is read by people all over the world and not just by Americans. Oh... wait... also Pandora is a local service though...

@Barb: please remember that the internet is Global and there's not only the USA!

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Good morning — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:36:29 -0000

Last.fm is part of CBS. The rumors that last.fm shared data with the RIAA were false. Funny how easy it is to spread false rumors these days.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

ongodavid — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:58:10 -0000

If Pandorajam (standalone app w/ nice features) didn't exist for OS X, I would say last.fm hands down... but it does exist, so it's a tough call. I also love Grooveshark for it's level of customization and playlist management.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

gigcity — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:24:21 -0000

Check out Last.fm - especially if you're an iTunes user.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

gigcity — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:42:18 -0000

Strange comment. Especially since neither Pandora or Spotify do what Last.fm does -- to literally listen to the listener (Scrobble). Last.fm's 'old model' is more intelligent suggestion and a unique personalized social community experience right?

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

gigcity — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:38:00 -0000

VERY untrue

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Anders Dahl — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:59:00 -0000

I agree, there is still a long way to go. But I also think last.fm (and others) are aware of their shortcomings and are working on them.
Last.fm has given the "global" music fan much to be happy for. I love world music and think it's awesome to discover many new bands from other countries. For me, it's a case of the "glass is half full".

I'm old enough to remember going to record stores and not finding anything or vey little info on world, jazz, classic or indie.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

hoyajavis — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:08:37 -0000

You're right that much music from around the world is missing from Pandora. I happen to like Korean music, so when I tried last.fm the first station I tried was the Korean rock band Jaurim. Not only were their songs listed separately under the Korean spelling, the English spelling and the Chinese spelling (many Korean artists are popular all across east Asia), but the station played anything and everything with the korean tag. That means that high energy female rock vocals from Jaurim were followed by crooning male ballad singers, hip hop, etc. etc. If I wanted to learn about new bands related Jaurim, that would NOT be the way to go about it.

There may be helpful users who frequently check for mistakes in the database, but for every one of those there could be thousands who continue to enter the same inaccurate or redundant information.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Anders Dahl — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 02:24:36 -0000

These services have different ideas about how you should get your music, so it's a little bit like apples vs. oranges.

last.fm - Legit service with big company taken care of things. Like it or not, but that might be what saves the site. Looks like they are ready for people when they get ready for paying for online music services.

Pandora - Also legit (right?) But lacking in almost everything besides actual sounds. No pictures, real bio, social media etc. It's bare bones, some like that, I like to find new music from other music fans.

Grooveshark/blip.fm/hypemachine etc - Grooveshark has a good selection, better than Pandora and maybe as good as Last.fm. The problem with these sites is that they are unreliable, since much popular music is taken down. So your playlists can be full of holes.
(Still love Hype machine)

I tried 3 different artists as a little test on Pandora, last.fm and Grooveshark:

Sunn O)) (drone metal band) - Came up on all 3.

Veto (awesome Danish indie band) - Came up on last.fm and Grooveshark, but better results on last.fm. No show on Pandora.

Huun-Huur-Tu (world music from Tuva) - The real test here was this band, famous in "world music" but unknown to most other music fans. Came up with bio, pictures and songs on last.fm. On Grooveshark there was a couple of songs. But Pandora came up blank again.

If you like different music, last.fm and Grooveshark is good choices. Pandora seems to be lacking, unless it's popular music.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Anders Dahl — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 02:20:09 -0000

Actually, I think you have it backwards. Last.fm has a "autochecker" for titles and artists and the active community is fixing the wrong tags/spelling etc. if last.fm misses them.
Also, there are many bands with the same name, most have a country listed in their bio.
I consider these small issues compared to not having any diverse music like Pandora.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

hoyajavis — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 02:05:52 -0000

I vote Pandora. last.fm depends too much on user-generated clusterfuck, err content. With incorrectly tagged songs, multiple spellings of the same artist, no distinction between bands from different countries with the same name, it's a complete crapshoot what you're going to hear when you listen to a station on last.fm. People who prefer the experience of listening to music on last.fm either have either never tried anything more than seeding a Pandora station with a single song or artist, or have no sensitivity to music.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Anders — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:24:14 -0000

"My varied musical tastes" you said?

Pandora is only service that comes up dry, whenever you pick an artist, that's just a little bit different.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Anders — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:20:50 -0000

I think they will win, they actually seem to know what they are doing.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Anders — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:18:48 -0000

Please explain how Last.fm is "the "old" model?

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

mechanesthesia — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:45:47 -0000

Are you serious! Pandora doesn't scrobble your tracks, Pandora doesn't recommend anything based on your listening history.

Do you know how many awesome bands I found through Last.fm?

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

rkv — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:14:47 -0000

simply grooveshark.com
lets have a poll with all the best contenders...

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Loren — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:07:53 -0000

My vote goes to last.fm all the way. All my favorite musical artists are Japanese, and Pandora never even manages to recognize them, let alone play tracks by anyone from the Japanese music scene except for the very most big-name of pop artists. Last.fm, on the other hand, has tons of stuff that I like. Until they improve their coverage of international music, Pandora will never get my traffic.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

Andrew — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:02:55 -0000

Before it was no longer allowed in Canada, I used Pandora. This was in its early days, so it may have (probably has) changed, but I found that it didn't really do a good job of accounting for you enjoying more than one or two genres of music.

What little I've used Last.fm, it seems fairly good as a source of information about artists and "similar artists".... but again, being in Canada there's certain features I lack without paying, so I can't really judge.

Really, the only web music service I use is radio3.cbc.ca. Independent artists upload tracks, djs play them, and you can favourite individual tracks and artists, and create and share playlists. As of today, it also has multiple streams for different genres, giving you more variety. I find it creates a good mixture of having curators give you new tracks (in the form of on-air DJs and other users) and being able to create your own mixes for when you don't want to deal with anything new or outside of your tastes.

Re: Web Music Faceoff: Pandora vs. last.fm

єηνy ™ — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:45:27 -0000

I like Last.fm