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5 Reasons to Listen to Pandora – Guest Post

This article discusses some great reasons to choose the Pandora music streaming service.

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7 Best Community Driven Online Music Services

The Best Music Services Part 4

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.

This is the 4th article in a 5 part series on the Best Music Services on the Internet. See the rest of the series:

1. The Most Reliable Online Music Services
2. Online Music Services with the Best Suggestion Quality
3. The Best Music Discovery Service
4. Best Community Driven Online Music Services

Let’s take a look at the types of community and social networking that each of these services offeres. (P.S. If you are interested in sharing musical selections with me, there are links at the bottom of the post.)

Community Features Comparison

iLike.com – iLike is allows you to share your music tastes on Facebook, Orkut, Bebo and hi5. Using the iLike application, you can add music to your profiles, be alerted to concerts and new releases by the artists you enjoy, see what music and concerts your friends like, and communicate directly with your favorite artists.

Community Quality  Despite my many disappointments with iLike, the Community features are actually very solid. In fact, they’re probably the only reason to use this service. (4 Stars)

Rating: At least they got something right.

Jango.com – Allows you to share music with friends and tune in to their selections.

Community Quality : The sharing features are decent, but pretty basic. (3 Stars)

Rating: Ok, but nothing special.

Last.FM – This is another area where Last.FM shines. There are numerous ways to connect with other people the site and many popular social networks. They also include forums and groups that you can join. You can pump your listening activity out to places like Facebook, Twitter, or your blog in real-time.

Community Quality : You can connect with anyone, anywhere, on any network from Last.FM. (5 Stars)

Rating: If you’re a social networking addict, this is the service for you.

MyStrands.com – They have a bunch of ordinary stuff here, but nothing special. This is probably the only feature that doesn’t suck on this site.

Community Quality : OK, but still not enough to make me use this craptacular mess. (3 Stars)

Rating:

Pandora.com – You can share playlists with your friends, but that’s about it.

Community Quality : This is the only disappointing feature of an otherwise amazing music experience. Maybe that’s why I like it, it’s simple. (2 Stars)

Rating: If you don’t care about community, this is definitely the best service out there.

Shoutcast.com – Nothing here that I can find.

Community Quality : It’s just radio as far as I can tell. (1 Star)

Rating: Man I have to make the Zero Stars image already.

Slacker.com – Nothing here either. (aside from great music)

Community Quality : Not for the Web2.0 crowd. (1 Star)

Rating: If your boss says that you’re not a team player, give this service a shot.

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The Best Music Discovery Service

Tell Me Something I Don’t Know

If I want to hear all of my favorite songs, I can just listen to the “My Top Rated” playlist in iTunes. One of the real values of a good online music service is the ability to turn you on to good new music that you DID NOT know about.

These days I find just about all of my bands from suggestions on my favorite services. Let’s take a look at how our players stack up on the issue of Music Discovery.

Music Discovery Comparison

iLike.com – They give you the option of seeing “New Music from Your Friends”, “New Music from Your Favorite Artists”, or “New Music from People with Similar Taste”.  These are some good ways to find good new music.

Music Discovery While there are many less-than-great things about this service, iLike does a decent job of showing me good music that I have not heard before. (4 Stars)

Rating:

Jango.com – When you build a playlist, they start to suggest other artists that are similar to the ones you have selected. You can leave them alone to hear them occasionally,  add these artists to the mix to hear them often, or delete them so you never hear them. Usually I’ll add artists that I don’t know to give them a listen. If I don’t like the, I just delete them later on.

Music Discovery  Again, I always seem to .

Rating:

Last.FM – I’m not exactly sure how Last.FM determines which new artists to play for me. I’m also not sure that they’re any good at it either. Whenever I select the “My Recommendations” option I never really like what I hear. However, when I select the “My Neighborhood” option, which plays favorites of people with similar taste to me, I usually do like what I hear. Does that mean that the masses are smarter than them? Probably.

Music Discovery  Their suggestions are actually not that good, but the “Neighborhood” ones help me find some decent new music occasionally. (3 Stars)

Rating:

MusicStrands.com – Yet another thing that they suck at. I’m starting to wish I had just left them out of this series all together.

Music Discovery  Pure crap. (1 Star)

Rating: Only because I don’t have a zero stars image.

Pandora.com – Pandora uses some scientific mumbo-jumbo to find music that you’ll like. They constantly mix in “new” music with the songs that you already like using this algorithm. I’m not quite sure how it works, but boy does it ever!

Music Discovery  This is where Pandora leaves everyone else in the dust. They never fail to amaze me with the mix of great songs that I have heard and great songs from artists that I usually like. At least half of the cool new music that I’ve found in the last two years has come directly from Pandora recommendations. (5 Stars)

Rating: I wish I could give them more than 5.

Shoutcast.com – Shoutcast is just a collection of online radio stations. Your odds of finding good new music are only as good as the station that you pick.

Music Discovery  I’m not really that into how Shoutcast works, but I guess you could hunt around and find something worthwhile. (3 Stars)

Rating: Decent, but not for me.

Slacker.com – Slacker gives you plenty of options to adjust your stations music selections. You can stick with more “familiar” music or go for a mix of “newer” artists. This generally helps you find lots of good stuff that I did not know about.

Music Discovery  If I’m in the mood to find a lot of good new music I can make Slacker send me a mix of mostly new music that I tend to like. (4 Stars)

Rating: Nice job!

Have Your Say

Well, you know what I think, let’s hear what you think. You can select more than one choice below if you have a tie for your most reliable service.