Surfing on my PC. Listening to the radio…

Since you are reading this I am going to go out on a limb and assume you spend some time on a computer. Maybe at work, maybe at home and maybe you even have a couple of computers at home. Each of us has own music preferences – but undoubtedly you enjoy some tunes while typing, surfing, memo-ing or whatever it is that you do on the computer.

So everybody knows about iTunes and it is great and one of my daughter’s rocks out to her music on the PC more often than on her iPod. But iTunes has some serious limitations. The biggest issue is that you have to download and install the iTunes software. Maybe not a problem at home, but a bit more of an issue at work. Everyday more workplaces are limiting downloads due to viruses and security issues . Now even if you can install iTunes on your work PC, your home and maybe even multiple home PCs, you have to download your songs or upload them from CDs onto each of these PCs. Okay – I’m tired just thinking about this.

That’s why music services like Pandora.com and Last.fm are attracting more and more fans every day. These service basically turn your PC’s speakers (or headphones) into a radio. But not just commercial radio, this is like XM radio where you get to pick the channels and the music styles that will have you bouncing and singing as you type. You should be grateful you can’t hear me singing along with Jimmy Buffett as I type this blog and it’s for that reason you have to use caution when listening at work.

The key power behind Pandora is its “Music Genome Project.” They have 50 trained music analysts – folks with at least a college degree in music who listen to songs all day long and rate each song on 400 different musical attributes (where was I when that job posting went out). By profiling songs this way, the system can predict that a person who likes a certain artist’s song will also like other songs with similar musical attributes. So you may pick mainstays like Billy Joel and Springsteen, but Pandora’s recommendation engine will mix in other songs that it predicts you will like.

After listening to Pandora for many hours, I’ve been pretty amazed at their accuracy. Hey the system isn’t perfect, what system is, but it has got me listening to that I wouldn’t have listened to otherwise. As you listen to each song you can give a simple thumbs up or thumbs down. When you give a thumbs down the song stops and that information is added in to the recommendation engine to further improve the selections you are provided. When I first listened I gave a bunch of thumbs down – but I have to say Pandora has learned and almost every song they serve up is a winner. I just get to, as Pandora says, “sit back and enjoy as Pandora creates a listening experience full of current and soon-to-be favorite songs .

Amazingly I am not alone in my Pandora adoration because at peak hours, Pandora claims that their traffic represents 1.5% of global Internet data. This music is not just a few songs from the popular stars as 94% of their database of 500,000 cataloged songs are played every day—a great example of the long tail effect. Tim Westergren claims that Pandora’s biggest competitor is the radio. Pandora wants to own the entire radio industry, not just the Internet radio market.

But if I were Tim I would be worrying about last.fm before setting my sights on the world of radio. Last.fm is a social recommender. Unlike Pandora, last.fm knows just the basics about a songs’ intrinsic qualities. Last.fm works on the concept of “birds of a feather flock together” and it assumes that “every track you play will tell your Last.fm profile something about what you like. It can connect you to other people who like what you like – and recommend songs from their music collections and yours too.”

Last.fm has even added a word to our lingo with “scrobble.” To scrobble means that when you listen to a song, the name of the song is sent to a last.fm and added to your music profile. They handle this automatically when you listen to songs via the website. You can also download their software so last.fm can learn from songs you play on your computer while you are not connected to last.fm. If you as much a computer geek as a music fan than you can also download software extras that can further enhance your music scroblling experience.

So which do you use – it depends on who you are:

• If you like to hangout and listen to your own music than Pandora is the way to go. But if you are all over MySpace and Facebook and love talking about everything you do, especially music, than last.fm is probably for you. The real benefits of last.fm come from those social connections.
• If you want the simplest to use solution it is clearly Pandora. Some of the best power of last.fm comes from the download and all the user created plug-ins – but that involves much more software setup.
• Do you get most of you new music from ideas and conversations with friends – then pop over to last.fm. Are you more of a music, for lack of a better word, snob? Then if so the music genome project selections will probably interest you more.

Now this next issue gets sensitive. How old are you? Yes, I really just asked that. If you look at the demographics of the Pandora audience you will see it is a bit older – 55% over the age of 35. While I don’t have comparable demographics for last.fm, check out the top 10 songs from 2008 that were listened to on last.fm

1. Coldplay – “Viva La Vida”
2. Coldplay – Violet Hill
3. MGMT – Time To Pretend
4. MGMT – Electric Feel
5. Coldplay – Life In Technicolour
6. Coldplay – Cemeteries of London
7. Katy Perry – I Kissed A Girl
8. Coldplay – 42
9. Coldplay – Strawberry Swing
10. MGMT – Kids

If you are like me, and you either don’t know those songs or you only know them because of your kids – you probably need Pandora. Though, I would like to end a vicious rumor that has started – AARP membership does not qualify you for a discount at Pandora (come on guys, it’s already free!).

That brings me full circle back to iTunes as each service has led to me discovering new music (Brendon Benson is paying in the background as I type now and until a few moments ago I was clueless as to who his is) and downloading songs via iTunes to my iPod to listen to on those rare moments when I am not tethered to a computer. My guess is whether you listen to Pandora or Last.fm – either way iTunes will be the winner as you put more money into your iTunes account.

So now you have some advice from little old me. Now go out and try them both. Let us know what you decide in the comments section!

dagsmith
/MusicPlayer.me Contributor

Popularity: 4% [?]