Online Music Roundup: Pandora, Last.fm, Yahoo! Music

Posted by Matt Deimel on 10/17/06 in Freeware, Review, Software

Finding free music on the internet is a difficult process. Between the commercials, quality, selection, and features, it may seem that nothing will suit your needs. This article will review three of the most popular internet music providers: Pandora, Last.fm, and Yahoo! Music.

Note: After the first draft of this article, Last.fm has significantly changed the UI of their player, their website, and some of the player’s features. Any update to an outdated section will be prefaced with an “UPDATE:” tag.

Online Music Roundup: Pandora, Last.fm, Yahoo! Music

Overview of Features

Tip: click each feature to jump to the full description. Red notes represent the lowest rank, Yellow is a middle rank, and Green is the highest rank.

Last.fm

Pandora

Yahoo!
Quality green music note green music note green music note
Players yellow music note green music note green music note
Customized Station red music note yellow music note green music note
Automated Music Selection red music note yellow music note green music note
Rating red music note red music note green music note
Skipping green music note yellow music note yellow music note
Pause red music note green music note green music note
Limits yellow music note yellow music note green music note
Commericials / Advertisements green music note yellow music note red music note
Errors red music note yellow music note yellow music note
Additional Features yellow music note yellow music note green music note

Overall

 red music note yellow music note green music note
Quality While quality is clearly one of the most important features of an Internet radio station, all three services covered in this article deliver an equal level of quality for their streaming music. These are all more than satisfactory levels of quality from my viewpoint.
Players

Last.fm

Last.fm uses a plug-in to work with a current media player. Without installing the plug-in you will receive the error message listed below (or one similar). For my purposes I was required to use a plug-in alongside fooBar2000. While the setup wasn’t an unreasonable amount of work, the other two players in this article were much simpler to get going and can be used without any type of downloading (very helpful when listening to music without your normal computer or at work).

The features itself are stripped down and basic, which means it is easier to use. The controls consist of volume adjustment, skip song, rate the song (’like it’ or ‘ban it’), and an option to write a tag or library item about the current track.

Firefox doesn't know how to open this address, because the protocol (lastfm) isn't associated with any program.

UPDATE: The UI has changed significantly, instead of having a simple interface, it has been altered to include a list of radio stations, recently played/loved/banned music, friends, history, etc. It also displays more information about the artist playing, and the length of time you have been listening to the current station. The old features are still available but the interface has been enhanced.

Pandora

Unlike Last.fm, Pandora has their player embedded in the browser, with the option to ‘minimize’ the player to a more stripped down browser window (which removes the address bar and navigation bar). The interface is quite a bit ‘busier’ than Last.fm’s, but is still very intuitive and easy to use. There are still the basic rating options, (’i like it’/thumbs up or ‘i don’t like it’/thumbs down), list of stations, play/pause/skip, and a full menu tool.

Yahoo!

There are two players you can use for Yahoo! Music, one embedded within a browser pop-up (similar to Pandora), and one that can be used within the Yahoo! Messenger client. The browser version is slightly ‘busier’ than the rest, as it seems to be advertising itself a fair amount. The Messenger client is simpler, but you also have the added *clutter* of a messenger.

The features are very similar to Pandora and Last.fm, the main difference is a more refined rating system, which is discussed in detail later.
Customized Station

Last.fm

Allows for several different stations in your ‘History’. Unclear what the station limit is, but it will hold both single song/artist stations, as well as a list of artists (created from the website).

UPDATE: The History option is still available in the new UI, but I have been unsuccessful in finding a place to select several artists and create a station based on them. Instead you can listen to music similar to one artist, or ‘Tune In’ to music according to how people have tagged them. While this is supposed to create a more community driven music space, I have found it to be very ineffective. Music that is nowhere near what I desire to listen to is played. (e.g. While trying to listen to artists similar to ‘Flogging Molly’ I heard songs by ‘Jethro Tull’, ‘Guster’, and ‘Trans-Siberian Orchestra’. (These artists are not what should have been played for music similar to the selected artist).

Pandora

Lets you have up to 100 stations at a time. Each is created by either a song or an artist. 100 stations is much more than needed, partly because there seems to be a lot of overlap in the stations, and partly because the UI only displays about 6 stations at a time (it would be difficult to navigate through all of them).

Yahoo!

There are several pre-defined stations that Yahoo! provides, but you are only allowed to create one personalized station (cleverly named ‘My Station’). Because Yahoo!’s music suggestions are so good, having only one station is not as limiting as it might seem.
Automated Music Selection

Last.fm

Of the three services, Last.fm seems to be the worst at choosing music based on the information the user is supplying (the current station and the rating of past songs). Because of this I nearly stopped my evaluation of Last.fm early because I found that the majority of the music was not what I wanted to listen to. The one feature that is helpful is the ability to create a station based on several artists (through the website). This multi-artist station comes much closer to picking music automatically, since there is so much more information to work with, instead of just one song or one artist.

UPDATE: As previously mentioned, I have been unsuccessful in finding this feature on the website or through the new player UI.

Pandora

Similar to Last.fm’s basic functionality, Pandora only allows customized stations to be created by listing one song or artist that you would like to hear similar music to. And while this functionality seems limited, the performance is slightly better than what is found with Last.fm. This is great for general music listening, but if you are looking to find some new artists and expand your music library, this is not really the station for it. Also, due to their licensing, they can not play the song that was just used to make a station, because you could effectively be making requests by creating new stations over and over again. The song selected will eventually play, but there is no guarantee on when it will come through the queue.

Yahoo!

Yahoo! is by far the best for selecting music. Part of this is due to the more advanced rating system, but it could also have to do with whatever code Yahoo! is using behind the scenes to sort and select music. It takes some time to build up enough song ratings to really improve the suggestions, but when it is done it is well worth it. If you really want to speed things up, you can search for songs on the website and rate them before they are ever played. This is another way to add new types of music into your station. What seems to make Yahoo!’s automated music selection so powerful is that it will play artists and songs that I already like, even before I have rated them, and it will also play music that I would have never found on my own, helping to expand my musical horizon.
Rating

Last.fm

A ‘love it’ and ‘ban it’ button on the UI is the only ability given to rate music played on Last.fm. Unfortunately this over-simplified rating system does not effectively suggest new music, or prohibit the playing of other music. The UI also does not keep track of songs you have already rated, which can be bothersome. For example, a set of musical groups I entered would frequently bring up ‘Bad Religion’ songs, and every time one of these songs would start playing I’d choose ‘ban it’. Regardless of how many times I did this the ‘Bad Religion’ songs would keep playing. I wondered if my rating affects only my station, or if it gets added to a larger pool of data, possibly used for everyone.

Pandora

Again, Pandora slightly outranks Last.fm when it comes to their rating system. It is still a simple ‘like it’ (Thumbs Up), or ‘don’t like it’ (Thumbs Down), but it will not play a song again that has been given a ‘Thumbs Down’. When a song comes through the queue that has been rated ‘Thumbs Up’, it will display that in the window, so you know you have already rated it.

Yahoo!

Yahoo! is the winner when it comes to the rating system. The first option is to setup a simple four star rating system (’It’s ok’, ‘Like it’, ‘Love it’, ‘Can’t get enough of it’), or a 100 point scale to fine tune your opinion. Each system also has a ‘Never Play It Again’ option, which is great for removing unwanted music from the potential pool of songs. Aside from having so many more choices for the rating, every song, album, and artist can be ranked. This would easily solve the ‘Bad Religion’ issue from the Last.fm section. When an artist comes on that I don’t want to hear again, I simply select the ‘Never Play It Again’ option, and I don’t have to worry about that artist any longer.
Skipping

Last.fm

Allows unlimited skipping, and will automatically skip every time the ‘ban it’ button is pressed.

Pandora

Pandora allows only 6 skips per hour, regardless of which station you are using. Their explanation of the situation is as follows:
Our licenses do not allow unlimited skips per hour.

The idea here is that you should not be able to skip ahead to find exactly the song you might be looking for. An unlimited number of skips could effectively provide “track on demand” which is not allowed in a streaming radio product. When the ‘I don’t like it’ button is pressed (giving the song a ‘Thumbs Down’) the player will skip to the next song, if there are any skips available for the current hour. Note: There is a workaround for this. If you are out of skips, and you do not like the song that is playing you can select another station, and immediately navigate back to the original station, and the unappealing song will have stopped, and the next song will have started. This is a bit of a hassle, but at least there is a workaround.

Yahoo!

The unpaid version of Yahoo! Music allows only 5 skips per hour. This was more problematic before I began using the ‘My Station’ feature. Once I had a good station with a lot of personalized music, I rarely skipped songs.
Pause

Last.fm

Offers no pause

Pandora

Offers a pause that will hold your spot for well over 60 hours (timed over a weekend).

Yahoo!

Offers a pause option
Limits

Last.fm

The UI does not show the song length, or how the long the song has been playing. What is displayed is an estimate of how long a song has been playing within a time meter, but the length of the bar is the same for every song (the meter just moves faster or slower depending on how long the song actually is).

UPDATE: There is no longer any information specific to the song, but simply how long you have been listening to the current station.

Pandora

Pandora’s UI has the same issue and solution for displaying the time. Pandora will also not play explicit lyrics, whether people find this to be good or bad is a personal choice.

Yahoo!

States both the length of the song and the current time of the track. Yahoo! also allows the limiting of explicit lyrics through a checkbox, so this can be unselected for those who want to hear the unedited versions. The big limit for Yahoo! is that you are only allowed to listen to 200 songs a month. While this was more than enough for me to listen to while at work (because I do not listen to music allday, every day), this will be a deterring factor for many people that would have otherwise tried Yahoo! Music.
Commercials / Advertisements

Last.fm

None found yet

Pandora

Originally there were no kinds of advertisements. Now in the last month there has been a change to the UI to include visual ads for items on sale at Amazon.com. Those concerned with privacy invasion do not need to worry, I have never found one of these advertisements to have any connection with the music I listen to. There are also supposed to be audio ads in the future, but I have not found any (as of this writing).

Yahoo!

Yahoo! does have commercials, which are usually 1 minute in length, and play around every 30 minutes. This level of advertisement is much less bothersome than regular broadcast radio stations, but the real annoyance is that one commercial can play for an entire day. While it might not seem like a lot, it can start becoming irritating relatively quickly.
Errors

Last.fm

On several occasions the Last.fm player will not even play a song. This has occurred both when starting up the player, and at random points during listening. Many times the UI does not keep up with the song being played, it might be half a song behind, or not show anything at all. I have also received the following error:

There is not enough content left to play this station.

The station ended, and I received this while pushing ‘Play’. Connecting to another radio station fixed the problem, but I still was not able to navigate back to the original station. (Is this like reaching the end of the internet?)

Pandora

Occasionally I have left the browser open for extended periods of time (i.e. several days), and it has been forced to shut down because of a software update. I would expect this to become less of an issue as Pandora.com matures and finalizes work on their player. I have also received the following errors once each: Macromedia 8 scripting error caused by Pandora that caused the computer to run slow. Fixed by saying ’stop using the script’, and the player interface stopped responding.
“It’s taking longer than expected to figure out the perfect song to play next. The music should be playing soon, but if you get tired of waiting, try switching to one of your other stations.” This is a weird error that may have been due to a network outage at my workplace.

Yahoo!

I have received scripting errors with Yahoo! in the past. The errors will not stop the play of music, but if you want to use any of the functionality of the UI (ratings, skipping), you will need to press ‘OK’ for each error that pops up on the screen, and there is usually one for every song that has played since the error began (usually I did not have to close more than five or six error windows at one time).
Additional Features

Last.fm

There is an option to tag a song/album/artist, or to write a journal about the song. There are many features on the website that I did not even begin to discuss in this article. It seems that there is a social community building up at Last.fm, similar to MySpace or Facebook, although on a smaller scale.

Pandora

Pandora allows you to “Keep track of the music you discover on Pandora - add it to your favorites list!” This is a great feature because you can print a list of your favorite music so you know what you have rated, and can then download it on iTunes, or purchase it at Amazon.com. You are also able to play ’snippets’ of songs, to see if you would be interested in hearing them on the radio station.

Yahoo!

The biggest feature of Yahoo! is the music rating, and music suggestions, which have both been discussed in previous sections. To see a more in depth view of just Yahoo! Music, check out my previous article on Yahoo! Music.

Closing Thoughts

While Yahoo! ranked the highest in overall features, the commercials and song limit were enough to make me switch to another music provider. Pandora has become the provider I use most for my internet radio. Last.fm has great features on their site and a community building around it, but that has not been a significant enough draw to pull me away from Pandora.

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3 Comment(s)

  1. Anonymous | Oct 27, 2006 | Reply

    You might consider adding iRate to your comparison. It has a similar rating system to Yahoo and lets users build a library of songs they like and choose when to play them–the latest UI seems to be a step downhill but still good overall. It pulls from a large free library of songs owned by some independent music company I can’t remember the name of–gives a pretty good variety of listenable music.

  2. Andy Atkinson | Nov 10, 2006 | Reply

    Another great feature of Pandora I just noticed: When an artist comes up that is currently on tour, a little “On Tour” link appears on the album cover square. I clicked the link for a Prodigy song remixed by Chemical Brothers and was taken here (showing a tour date in a few weeks in California). This feature could be enhanced to show tour dates within a zip code range.

  3. Karl | Jan 6, 2007 | Reply

    Wow, my feelings on these three music services couldn’t be further from yours. If I may offer a differing opinion, and a slight review:

    Quality: Pandora and Yahoo limit the quality of the music. while it isn’t horrible, it doesn’t even sound 128 kbps. Last.FM sounds to be 128k. At least its quality is high enough to cause skipping and rebuffering on slower networks.

    Compatibility: Yahoo is by far the worst here. It wouldn’t play on a Mac at all. Firefox, Camino, and Safari all get the same error from Yahoo music “Netscape 6.0 + is not supported” Firefox on Windows gives me the same error. It also requires a higher version of Flash than pandora or Last.FM.

    Application: I prefer having the standalone application with plugin for iTunes for Last.FM. this means you can further refine it’s suggestions for you on your own time by playing your music through iTunes and rating it as you go. Obviously the flash plugin problems for Yahoo hinder it, and the UI is slower to update on web-based programs. Last.FM’s application works on both Macs and Windows, and has the same UI for both.

    Recommendations: I found Yahoo’s to be much much worse than any others so far. I typed in that I liked Clutch, Fu Manchu, Meteors, and Wayne Hancock, belonging to genres of Rock, Stoner Rock, Psychobilly and Rockabilly respectivly. Yahoo comes back with Sublime and U2. Blech, I really wish I knew why and where it recommended those, but Yahoo’s cluttered interface didn’t say how. It just said by genre. Pandora was much better by requesting Queens of the Stone age (which is an obvious recommendation, but at least it’s accurate) but it’s selection was limited, out of five songs, it played 4 clutch and fu manchu songs. I’d like to hear some recommendations that are DIFFERENT from what I requested.
    Last.FM really surprised me play suggesting songs by very small independent artists that I honestly thought I was the only person to enjoy.

    Selection: Yahoo Music seems most geared toward mainstream music. of the music I listened too, almost all was available on a commercial radio station already, it had very little selection of smaller bands from my recommendations. Pandora had several selections from smaller bands, but at the same time, the variety of musicians was limited. I could input bands that even iTunes Music store has that Pandora did not have. Last.FM has given me the broadest range so far, but it has repeated several songs I have tagged “love” already, so while it’s depth seems greater, it still has repeats.

    Ratings: the Idea of yahoo’s ratings of several levels is very nice, since music certainly isn’t just black and white, love or hate. it gets a plus there

    Advertisements: the commercials on yahoo alone are enough for me to never go back. 7 day free trial of no ads, but there are still ads when you open your player. Pandora isn’t as bad, but even in the mini player, there is a big ad on the screen. Last.FM amazes me, in that I haven’t found an ad yet.

    by far, my favorite is Last.FM, pandora is second, and in a distant third is Yahoo.

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