Comparison of Pandora and Last.fm 163
An anonymous reader writes "Blogger Steve Krause takes an interesting look at how music recommenders Pandora and Last.fm work, including some algorithmic strengths and weaknesses. Although he seems to think Last.fm is better now, his punchline is that a combination of their approaches will eventually be the real winner and for that, Pandora can more easily become like Last.fm than the other way around."
Lastfm (Score:5, Informative)
The Cathedral and the Bazaar (Score:5, Informative)
I've played with both services as well, and I have now been a happy (and paying) last.fm user for several months. I don't quite share the author's enthusiasm about Pandora; in my case (and for some of the friends I tried it for), its recommendations were not quite that good.
The centralized music genome inventory that Pandora relies on reminds me of a Cathedral, while Last.fm is more like a Bazaar of babbling voices -- now I wonder where that metaphor comes from!
I think Last.fm has more potential because it is fundamentally a social service -- it feels a lot more like other open online communities I have come to know and love, whereas Pandora seems more like a black-box to me (something the review author also mentioned).
Re:Lastfm (Score:2, Informative)
Or am I missing something?
Re:Pandora and DRM (Score:5, Informative)
Each track is seperated by a string, "SYNC" which the player detects. It's pretty easy to copy the stream, split it into multiple files and automaticaly tag and name them correctly actually. It took me about 20 minutes to hack some Python together to do it.
Re:Perfect timing (Score:5, Informative)
We're also busy readying some cool new features to be released by the end of the week...subscribers will also have access to a beta site (beta.last.fm) later today to try out some of these new goodies.
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http://www.last.fm/user/flaneur [www.last.fm]
Last.fm worked out the kinks (Score:4, Informative)
Similar but different... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lastfm (Score:1, Informative)
The biggest advantage of Pandora, IMO, was the less-intrusive nature of the service, as using a Flash Player seems much "friendly" to the user (not to mention that's a easier way to popularize the site among the average Joes)
Re:Last.fm worked out the kinks (Score:2, Informative)
Otherwise, if a later one submits before an earlier one, the spam protection gets triggered and your earlier ones are lost.
A lot of people do it, use a plug in for one media player in their work them come home and use another plug in with another media player at home.
I've got a plug in for WMP on the windows half of my computer, and amaroK set up on my linux half. No problem. I did, at one point, have the plugins both set up for winamp and WMP simultaneously. No problems there, either.
Re:Lastfm (Score:3, Informative)
http://vidar.gimp.org/lastfmproxy/ [gimp.org]
It's a python script that redirects the stream into a player of your choice.
Re:Pandora and DRM (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Perfect timing (Score:3, Informative)
Direct link: svn://svn.audioscrobbler.net/player/trunk
You'll have to use subversion [tigris.org] to download it.
Re:Pandora and DRM (Score:2, Informative)
While it is an interesting article... (Score:2, Informative)
I have been using this service for the last 4 years, and it's helped me to discover LOTS of new bands and songs that I prior would not have known about. I simply click on how much I like an artist, and so it plays more songs from that artist or songs from similar artists. I can rate albums, songs, and artists themselves, so I am getting results based on how an album sounds, a song sounds, or an artist in general.
So yea, Last.Fm is cool and all, but for those of us on the Launch bandwagon for so many years, it's hardly revolutionary.
Used Pandora wrong (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Pandora and DRM (Score:2, Informative)
Comments on last.fm (Score:3, Informative)
2. Excellent database of obscure music artists. Any name I threw at them, there was an entry for it. I even uploaded some album pics
3. Friendly community
and now the bad.
1. The last.fm player is horrible. Horrible usability, and often I just get nothing for music. Can't use it at work. Prior buggy version muted itself unless you gave it exclusive focus.
2. The audioscrobbler plug-in often refuses to handshake.
3. The combination of both is a bit obfuscated.
4. You see just how badly tagged Mp3s across the world are. You often find the wrong tracks, or 20 similarly-named tracks of the same song for an artist. Not last.fm's fault, but it would be nice someday to fuzzy logic them together.
5. A bit bureaucratic in getting artist images uploaded. If it's an unpopular artist, it will never get the # of votes needed to surface.
That is the whole point! (Score:1, Informative)
There is a freestanding radio player if you don't want to install it. But the audioscrobbler plugin is the whole point of the service. I think its even integrated into newer versions of xbox media centre.
It takes a while to work out the kinks and build a good profile i'm really liking the service after a few weeks using it... and the fact you have a page that shows what you listen to, and can use it to build cool forum sigs showing your recent fave songs is great too.
BTW/ the players have an option NOT to send songs to fast.fm (for trying out new random stuff) and you can always delete songs from your profile (if your sister has been listening to britney behind your back!)
Re:Pandora wins (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Sounds good. But where is the music? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.last.fm/music/Les+Barker/_/Hard+Cheese
Ones that are have a "preview" button, like this one:
http://www.last.fm/music/Runrig/_/Ribhinn+Donn [www.last.fm]
(to take the example of what happens to be playing at the moment).
Re:Pandora wins (Score:3, Informative)
If you want to find new stuff, start the radio and select "discovery mode" off the settings menu - it'll only play stuff it hasn't played before.
If you hear something that you don't want to, hit "skip". It'll learn.