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Pandora? What about Last.fm?
So part of the blogosphere is raving about Pandora. I guess I always get the “so what?” feeling when I see a web-app emerging that’s doing the same thing as one before. What I mean is, how is this any better than Last.fm?
Now before you email me the obvious “oh-my-god you are clueless burn in hell” emails, let me clarify. I know Pandora and Last.fm work very differently. I also understand that it is interesting how Pandora finds new songs for you to listen based on what you’ve heard before. But if you’ve been using the (very recently redesigned) audioscrobbler/last.fm, you’ve seen this already. Ages ago, too. This doesn’t clarify much, let me get into the details:
How pandora works
Pandora works by finding out relevant tracks close to your tastes by analizing proprieties of the songs you like and getting you new ones that share the same proprieties. So if a song is calm and moody and you like it, pandora thinks you’ll like more calm and moody songs - and sends them your way. Okay, but what if I am a “kind of band” / attitude person? I mean, most people are. It will keep me around the same “calm and moody” song type for as long as it can.
I know you’ll listen to a lot of songs you’ll probably like. Because if you like the attributes of a song and you identify yourself with them, you will probably like similar songs. Correct, I’ll give you that.
How last.fm works
Last.fm goes through your musical taste and gets people that share all the kinds of stuff you listen to with you. And from all those guys, finds the most suitable bands or songs to play to you because people with similar tastes like them. This means with more people, the more knowledgeable the system is and the easiest it is to play tracks you’ll like.
The system learns and collects data from what you listen to, in order to be more informed of your musical tastes and continuously improve the knowledge base. Plus, you can track what your friends are listening to and get references from that too, because of the social network layer built into the system.
Comparing the two
Okay so which approach do you find the best? Personally, I quite like the latter. I like how I can get to last.fm, type a band I like (or not type any if the system already knows my musical tastes) and let it give me a suitable radio for me to listen to. Or, heck, forget the radio, just a list of what I’m probably going to like so I can buy/download/do whatever in my own pace.
Personally, I think last.fm came a bit too early and didn’t get all the hype new web applications are getting just because people like Scoble blog about them. But, for me, it is still the best musical service on the web today. In fact, if there’s something that makes me buy new music, it is Last.fm, not iTunes or Pandora, for example.
Now, let me give out some final notes. I don’t mean to bash Pandora, because I like how it works, I like how the application behaves (even though I don’t really like the looks), and I believe a little competition to last.fm in the musical discovery “business” is okay. But, well, it’s just not the better product. If it is going to get users? Well, yes, now that Scoble, Mike and everybody else are linking to it, but… That’s about it. Sorry.
I guess the best thing everybody should do is visit pandora and last.fm and take their own conclusions. Oh, and if you’re curious about my own taste in music, here’s a link to my last.fm profile.
I’m with you on this one, I’m a huge Last.fm fan, ever since it was just Audioscrobbler. I like being able to link people to my profile so they can see what music I like, and I love finding new bands to listen to.
Last.fm all the way!
Comment by Levi — August 30, 2005 @ 4:08 am