Internet Radio Match-Up: Last.fm vs Pandora

With the invention of such things as music on demand, the concept of radio is becoming a bit of a dinosaur (and I include satellite radio with that description.  Why pay money for something you can get online for free?).  However, broadcast music is far from dead and with the correct software any iPhone or iPod Touch (provided the iTouch can catch a Wi-Fi signal) can become a portable radio.  The interactive capabilities of the software far exceed anything pedestrian radio could hope to achieve. 

In that vein, I am going to compare two free iTunes software applications for sharing and listening to music across the Internet (in effect becoming your own disc jockey by making a playlist and sharing with friends).  Both have websites associated with them which work very similar to the iPod Touch/iPhone application equivalent, but this article will concentrate on the latter.

Last.fm: 

Like its namesake website, you have to create an account in order to use the site.  However, you don’t have to provide any personal information for the account (not even an e-mail address, although that is an optional input).  Upon entering the application, you are supposed to do a search for music based on artist, tag or another user id.  Depending on your mood at the time you can type a particular artist or musical type and the program automatically plays a stream of songs of a similar nature with no commercial interruption whatsoever.  As someone who has very eclectic taste in music, I was pretty impressed with the music that the program chose based on my initial selection.  The program provides a button on the top right of the screen for biographical information if you want to learn exactly who is singing the song.  The program even lets you know if the artist is on tour and provides a tour calendar.  There are buttons available if you want to skip the current song and hear the next selection and a stop button to search again.  You can’t reverse or replay the current selection so, as with radio, your control is limited.  There is no pause, which I find as a flaw.  The program remembers recent stations selected and you can choose a song as a favorite for later replay.  You can also buy the song on iTunes if you like it.

You can get Last.fm HERE in the App Store.

Pandora: 

As with Last.fm, you can create an account to use the program.  Unlike Last.fm, you need to provide personal information including e-mail address, zip code, birth year and gender.  Once logged in, you are asked for an artist, song or composer to create a station.  Once a few letters are input into the search box, the program gives suggestions based on the auto-completion of your input.  Unlike Last.fm, you are actually invited to rate the song with buttons indicating “thumbs up” and “thumbs down”.   You can also bookmark a particular song and buy it on iTunes.  Also, you can pause the song or skip to the next one.  There is a button on the top left which lets you know why this particular song was selected as your station.  There are ads that pop up with each song, which you can close with each song but gets annoying after the first time.  I guess they need to make income somehow.

You can get Pandora HERE in the App Store.

Based on their minimal requirements for an account along with the lack of ads, I think Last.fm is the better of the two programs (although I find the inability to pause the song in Last.fm to be perplexing).  However, I recognize that not everybody’s application tastes are the same as mine and since they’re both free of charge, I see no reason not to install both if you have the room on your iTouch or iPhone.