Separating the Contenders from the Pretenders
There are a bazillion services out there that will stream music to you over the interwebs. A few are amazing an then there are well…”the rest”.
Loading up a few hundred thousand songs and streaming them is not really that big of a deal. The “special sauce” is what adds real value to these services.
Let’s to take a look a some of the major players in this space to see how they all stack up.
The Contenders
I will be evaluating the following seven music streaming services.
iLike.com -enables fans to discover and share playlists, new music that matches their personal tastes, and concerts by their favorite artists. iLike offers retail links to iTunes and Amazon to purchase music, Ticketmaster to purchase concert tickets and Thumbplay for ringtones.
Jango.com – Jango is a social music service that lets you create and share custom radio stations. It’s the easy way to play the music you want online, legally and free.
Last.FM – Last.fm is a music service that learns what you love.
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.
MusicStrands.com – MyStrands’ Social Recommender is capable of automatically learning people’s tastes and how their preferences evolve over time. It can be used to generate real-time music recommendations.
Pandora.com – Together, ateam of fifty musician-analysts has been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song. It takes 20-30 minutes per song to capture all of the little details that give each recording its magical sound – melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics … and more – close to 400 attributes! They continue this work every day to keep up with the incredible flow of great new music coming from studios, stadiums and garages around the country.
Shoutcast.com – SHOUTcast Radio offers thousands of free Internet radio stations from DJs and broadcasters around the world.
Slacker.com – Slacker is what radio was meant to be: personal, portable and free. Slacker attempts to deliver free personalized radio that is customized for everyone. Slacker combines the knowledge of the nation’s leading music experts from every genre and your own personal tastes to create the perfect radio stations for each and every listener.
If there are any that are missing, add them in the comments and I’ll try to cover them in a subsequent article.
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Media, Music, Product Reviews, Web Surfing
ilike.com, internet radio, last.fm, music services, pandora, shoutcast, slacker.com
One of the things that makes online music services more interesting and useful than your iTunes library is the aspect of a Music Community. Not only can you hear good music, but you can connect with friends and others who share your tastes. This allows you to socialize about your favorite artists and see what others think and listen to. I get a lot of suggestions for new music from the people in my online music communities.
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