I think that there are enough of people on the Internet which like to listen to music online. For this purpose the services MOG, Pandora and Spotufy are the most suitable.
Between these services there are enough features
and a variety of tunes to satisfy almost everyone.
But which is the
best, and for what? Let's take a look.
Pandora is a US-only automated radio
and recommendation service. Their service is built around the Music
Genome Project, in which any given song is represented by a list of 400
attributes ("genes") of musical characteristics. When a song is
presented to a Pandora user, they can indicate whether they like it with
a thumbs up or down, and the service takes that into account for future
recommendations.
Pandora has Apple and Android app versions, and has two subscription
options: free with advertisements and a 40-hour cap, and paid.
Pros: We've found the recommendations system works really
well, and have even discovered some new favorite bands that way. The
service plays you types of songs you'll like in any genre you want, so
it's a good way to explore. The preset radio stations are also worth a
look.
Cons: Can't control which songs you listen to, which is a
bummer if you really do just want to hear one artist or album and not
similar types of music. If you listen to the service every day for a
while, songs start to repeat, or recommendations get a little wonky
(along the lines of playing Disney radio stars near the end of a hip hop
mix).
Spotify is a Europe-only music streaming service with a wide variety
of music from major and independent labels. Currently they offer about
13 million tracks, with about 10,000 added each day.
Spotify has free and paid subscription options, and plays through a
dedicated player available on every OS as well as Android and Apple
phones (with a premium account).
Pros: We have been massively impressed by the sheer amount
of music available on this service; Spotify has just about every track
you'd ever want to listen to. They also have a really great
playlist-making and -sharing setup, which is as easy as copy and pasting
a link. Playlists can also be edited by groups of people.
Cons: Obviously being Europe-only (and only Sweden, Spain,
Norway, Finland, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom at that)
is problematic. This worked for us while we were traveling back and
forth between continents a lot, because logging in from a European IP
lasts for about two weeks before it checks where you are again.
Supposedly they're going to release in the US some time in 2011.
There are some other problems with content restriction from record
company licensing, and they've recently announced free users won't be
able to listen to as many tracks as before, or as many times.
MOG is a paid subscription and social music service. MOG has no
regional restriction as far as we're aware, and because it's paid there
are no ads. The music catalogue is 10 million songs so far, and includes
full albums. Users can either queue songs and albums, or listen to more
from the same or similar artists.
Subscriptions are $5/month for web and Roku channel access, and
$10/month for listening through those as well as apps. Users can
download songs to the app for offline listening. New users get a 14 day
free trial.
Pros: MOG seems to be the best of the Pandora and Spotify
worlds; listen to whomever you want and when, and build playlists like
Spotify offers, or have slightly-less-accurate-than-Pandora
radio-listening options.
Cons: If you're willing to fork out the cash, it's a pretty
good deal, but paid still has a hard time standing up to free. Similar
artists can be a bit random at times.
(material from apartmenttherapy.com)
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