![]() Like most music lovers, I have a few relatively obscure favourites, and so I searched, first, for the Rainmakers, a country-rock band from Missouri who were big in the 1990s in Norway (really!). So I decided to dig a little deeper, and was pleasantly surprised. Of course, all three offer the obvious selections - if you want to listen (for whatever reason we’re not here to judge…) to One Direction or Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga, you’ll find their music, unsurprisingly, on all three services. Pandora brings up the rear here, with between 800,000 and 1 million tracks, depending on the source, although the company claims that 95 percent of Pandora’s songs are played every month, implying that size isn’t all that matters. The only number I can find for Last.fm is 7 million tracks in 2009, though the site’s Wikipedia page claims 12 million. Last.fm fits somewhat between Spotify and Pandora, in that you can play thirty-second samples of some (but by no means all) songs to help you decide how to seed your station, but it otherwise reverts to the station model.Ĭhoice - Based on raw numbers, Spotify has the largest catalog of the three, clocking in at 15.5 million tracks as of a year ago. Then I’ll have to hope it shows up as Pandora offers me a series of songs similar to its idea of what the Stones sound like, a sensibility generated by the Music Genome Project. And if I want to hear one of my personal favourites - “Stray Cat Blues,” say, or “Torn and Frayed,” Last.fm and Pandora focus on this radio approach, and are based around the idea of “stations.” My search on Pandora for the Stones starts “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” playing this song, apparently, is typical of the band’s style, which, according to Pandora, “features electric rock instrumentation, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, extensive vamping, and major key tonality.” I’m a sucker for extensive vamping, and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” is archetypal mid-period Stones, but I had no choice of which Rolling Stones song Pandora played (a subsequent search played “Paint It, Black” instead). Spotify doesn’t make you do all the work, though, offering an “artist radio” option for playing songs chosen by the service based on a selected band. For example, search for “Exile on Main Street” by the Rolling Stones, double-click “Rocks Off,” and when that song finishes, Spotify simply moves on to play “Rip This Joint,” as Keith Richards intended. Of the three, only Spotify allows you to choose specific albums and songs to listen to. ![]() On closer inspection, though, differences emerge. What They Do - At their simplest, all three services stream songs based on selections you make. So I waited until the family were out, plugged my best powered speakers into my laptop, fired up the three services, and - oh, the things I do for TidBITS - I spent the afternoon listening to my favourite music.Īlthough I didn’t look at them, there are other services - most notably Rdio and Mog - that offer features and pricing nearly identical to Spotify’s, so if you decide that you like the type of service Spotify offers, but have an issue with something related to Spotify specifically, it might be worth checking them out. The three main players in this space - Pandora, Spotify and Last.fm - offer broadly comparable services, with a few details to separate them. But, quietly, outside the Apple spotlight, online music streaming services have matured, to the point where one could rely entirely on them for one’s listening, listening for free (with ads) or paying a monthly subscription fee instead of purchasing individual tracks and albums. To be sure, the iTunes Store, bolstered by hundreds of millions of iPods and iOS devices, has turned the market for purchased music on its head. The way we consume music has changed radically in the last decade. #1641: LastPass breached, Live Text aids recipe input, fix for failed MobileDeviceUpdater installs.#1642: How to identify phishing attacks, new iPhone and iPad passcode requirements.#1643: New Mac mini and MacBook Pro models, new second-gen HomePod, security-focused OS updates, industry layoffs.#1644: Explaining Mastodon and the Fediverse, HomePod Software 16.3 and tvOS 16.3, GoTo breach.#1645: AirPlay iPhone to Mac for remote video, Siri learns to restart iPhones, Apple's Q1 2023 financials.
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