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So I recently got a new job where I can listen to music during the day and immediately thought of getting an internet radio app for my phone to supply me with an endless supply of tunes to get me through the day. The only problem is, I don't know which app and service to use. I have tried out pandora radio and last.fm and so far I like last.fm the best because you can skip as many times as you want. It seems to me that among the forums pandora radio is a favorite though. Is anyone educated in these three services enough to tell me the pros and cons of each? Like I said, I like last.fm because I am not limited by the number of skips I can have per day/hour like pandora and slacker. What does everyone suggest I use and why?
What is the advantage of the Pandora paid service? You get unlimited skips for the day but only 6 an hour right? I need a service with no skip limits...any services besides last.fm that provide that?
Slacker provides no skip limits. I like how slacker gives you the option to ban the song or the artist. You definitely have more customizability using slacker. You check and uncheck which artists play on certain stations on their website. Slacker also offers caching your music, for offline playback which is very useful. I feel Pandora has better mixes for the music I listen to, however.
I like and use both Pandora and Slacker. Pandora ads are more annoying than Slacker ads imo. If Pandora One wasn't limited to skipping, I would have subscribed I reckon.
Edit: One more thing I like about Slacker is you can see what artist will be playing next.
Last edited by skipdividedmalfunction; August 4th, 2010 at 10:37 PM.
I tried all three for a few days each a couple of months ago. Eventually ended up getting a paid slacker account. Pandora does it's playlists based on the way a song sounds, it's all done by computers. Slacker is done by actual people. I've found that listening to Pandora for hours on end resulted in either a few artist being played over and over, repeating songs, or it would get so far off from the starting point that I didn't even like the music anymore. Complete genre changes. Slackers customizable playlists blow Pandora out of the water.
I also use Grooveshark a ton. Being able to make my own playlists and listen to anything I want whenever I want is pretty awesome. $3 a month for Grooveshark means never having to buy another album.
I also use Grooveshark a ton. Being able to make my own playlists and listen to anything I want whenever I want is pretty awesome. $3 a month for Grooveshark means never having to buy another album.
problem with grooveshark is there is no consistent audio quality, and most music on there is of poor quality.
If you train your Pandora One Stations correctly there is no need to skip, if you are using a service with unlimited skips it is because it is a poor service overall, if it was good you wouldn't have to utilize skips.
That said I find I hardly ever have to skip using Pandora One, it is just that good but you get out of Pandora One what you put into it.
problem with grooveshark is there is no consistent audio quality, and most music on there is of poor quality.
If you train your Pandora One Stations correctly there is no need to skip, if you are using a service with unlimited skips it is because it is a poor service overall, if it was good you wouldn't have to utilize skips.
That said I find I hardly ever have to skip using Pandora One, it is just that good but you get out of Pandora One what you put into it.
Personally I like slacker, but only if you subscribe. The advantages of having stations cached to your device are huge. I don't have to have data/wifi and the battery use for a whole day is about 15% of the total battery. The only thing I don't like is that you have to "sign in" at some point or the app won't launch. If I forget to sign in, then go to a place without data/wifi, I can't use the app.
Personally I like slacker, but only if you subscribe. The advantages of having stations cached to your device are huge. I don't have to have data/wifi and the battery use for a whole day is about 15% of the total battery. The only thing I don't like is that you have to "sign in" at some point or the app won't launch. If I forget to sign in, then go to a place without data/wifi, I can't use the app.
I guess I'm still on the fence. I like Pandora's selection but hate that I cant skip. I also like last.fm but it seems like when I select an artist to create a channel with I hear maybe one song from that artist. So I'm not sure what to do. After using Pandora a while do you have to skip much? It "learns" from your selections right?
i love the song selection of slacker. i find stations to be more indepth than pandora. cached stations are real sweet as mentioned, you rarely get the same playlist unless you heart the song and it will just pop up a bit more randomly
If you want songs chosen by computer algorithms, get Pandora. It sucks. You put in a shoegazer band from the '90s and then it starts playing elevator music because those songs are similar in timbre, pitch and so on. Last.fm uses its database of what other people actually listen to, so I find its recommendations and neighborhood radio spot on.
However, Slacker seems to have the best audio quality, cache or no cache. I'm kinda thinking of getting a Slacker subscription for this, and its picks won't give me the really obscure stuff Last.fm gets, but the sound quality seems to be a lot better than last.fm.
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Haven't tried Slacker, use both the free Pandora and the free Last.fm. I find, as someone else pointed out, the variety of music picked seems to be more with LAST.FM, but, you may never hear the artist who's "radio" it is again after the first song. Pandora does seem to have a more limited selection, but, despite being computer generated, I find I get playlists that I like, have artists similar to my featured one (I have discovered some, like Jonathan Coulton, who came up on the station of one of my favorite bands, They Might Be Giants. You also get to hear the artist you started with more often, rotated through the playlists (I also do "train" Pandora, with the thumbs up/down icons)
I use it all the time at work and home. Good connections with 3G and works excellent with wifi. There are literally thousands of worldwide stations you can tune into, using Shoutcast to search for any number of genres, music or talk. It supports mp3, m3u and pls streams, but not aac. Free version works fine. Also a paid version available which adds support for aac, podcasts, and custom urls.
Last edited by curiogeo; August 7th, 2010 at 07:20 PM.
Just use whatever works best for you. Everyone has their own preference when it comes to streaming radio services. I have both Last.fm and Pandora installed on my phone and I prefer Pandora.
I agree with the poor quality comment about Grooveshark. It's a shame otherwise I would pay the $3. I love using their website when I'm on my computer. The quality of the MOG and Rdio apps blow away the quality of Grooveshark.
I like Slacker so much I just might pay for it. Which is not like me at all. I like it because I can hear music I've not heard before. Expanding my horizons and all that. If I pick an artist Pandora tends to play stuff I've already heard. I might like it, but I want new stuff. So I pick a genre with Slacker and hear some stuff I've heard and like and other stuff that I haven't heard.
Edit: I might try last.fm now that I've read good things about it here. If it's available in the US that is.
Last.FM has a rather limited music selection. it's the only one in the UK but it couldn't find The Streets. That makes it Last(place)FM IMO. i switch off between Panda and Slacker.
Last.FM has a rather limited music selection. it's the only one in the UK but it couldn't find The Streets. That makes it Last(place)FM IMO. i switch off between Panda and Slacker.
Maybe you should give last.fm another shot...I too being a fan of the streets was able to find them on last.fm right away...maybe they are a new addition?
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Interesting, I find that last.fm's music catalog to be way too big/obscure for my tastes. Pandora gives me a lot more mainstream stuff. That could be a good thing or a bad thing for others though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by skipdividedmalfunction
Slacker provides no skip limits.
I think you gave people the wrong impression by not noting that this is only in the pay version.
In the free version, it appears to be the same 6 skips as Pandora. Does Pandora pay version eliminate the skipping limit?
Someone correct me if I am wrong but I believe that Pandora paid still has a limit of 6 skips an hour but gives you "unlimited" skips for the day rather than let say 6 an hour and 12 a day (not sure what the real numbers are for free). Kinda dumb that they say unlimited skips per day because obviously if you can only have 6 skips an hour you are limited to how many you can have in 24 hours.
how many songs does slacker save when it does the mobile caching on a 2gb sd card?
I'm considering switching over from pandora just for this feature so i can turn on 2g only on my phone to conserve battery life while playing music from slacker.
Pandora vs. Slacker vs. Last.fm...
