Pandora vs. Last.fm

If you do not know what these tools are, you're missing out!!

www.pandora.com
www.last.fm

Basically they're used for exploring new music and expanding your appreciation and horizon for a particular genre. I've discovered so many bands this way which i would have otherwise not heard of.

Pandora is basically an online radio station that plays a style you want it to. you can actually "shape" the station by telling it what kind of artists you like, what kind of songs you like, and more importantly, what kind of music you hate! You can create multiple radio stations, there are no commercials (aside from banner ads). There is even an option to play your stations at the same time, cycling between them like a "shuffle" function. You are able to then share your station with other users

Last.fm is different. You play the music you already own in your Windows Media Player/iTunes, and Last.fm will record what you play. You will then be given recomendations to what you play and how much you play it. Also, creating an account with Last.fm makes you part of a very large community where you can see what friends are listening to, recomend bands to eachother, find local events taking place, etc, etc.

These 2 are the most popular tools. I don't know of any other tool out there, so if there's one you use, let me know. Also, I did not count websites and forums that allow exploration, such as metalstorm where you can see artist info, similar artists, their history, biography, discography, videography, etc. You can't hear anything, though.

I know someone has posted about Pandora before. Last.fm is a first for me though. Interesting, for some reason I just can't get into net radio for some reason.

well last.fm isn't net radio, you play songs that you own on your media player, and last.fm does something they call "scrobble" it. basically, they just record that hey, you just listened to "this" song, then they run thru their database and recomend you other artists similar to your taste. I think they have a net radio, though, through a subscription or something... i just started using it recently, so i'm not really that familiar with it. Its a lot more complicated than Pandora, i prefer that, usually. real easy tool, been using that for a long time now, more than a year i think.