53R1A75

I know it’s been a while faithful, if sparse, readers. And I apologize. Recently a great travesty has been done to my normal way of life. Pandora has begun putting invasive advertising in my playlists. Normally, I listen in peace, enjoy new music and can avoid the passive advertising on their site. Of course they offer a subscription service for money, but seriously, NOT WORTH IT OK. Streaming netflix and hulu to my XBOX because I don’t get cable, is a little more worth it.

so here goes, I googled “pandora alternative,” and while i mostly found yahoo! answers… here’s the results of my search (untested).

• musicovery - this is probably the one i will recommend for being the most like pandora in the way it takes your input and gives you new music to listen to.
• finetune – this is a really interesting one. I signed up for this a long time ago when they first came out with their player for the wii. I’m thinking I may get back into this one if musicovery bombs out. You enter an artist that you like and they make you a playlist with music you may like. A playlist that you can share! on your wii!
• allmuzz/lavabeat - these aren’t really suggestion programs as much as they are media purchasing centers. I’d recommend lala over these any day.
• rhapsody – i think this one is also like lala/allmuzz/lavabeat, but you have to subscribe, and i think realplayer is trash, so avoid this one like the plague.
• delicast – internet radio, not so much music recommendation, but it has a huge variety of stations to check out. presentation is uber lo-fi, so shoutcast may be better in this genre of things.
• shoutcast – AOL‘s streaming radio. it used to be winamp’s streaming radio… or maybe it never was until aol bought winamp. i personally prefer podcasts to radios, plus itunes does the whole streaming audio thing too. but for a web based music source, this isn’t too bad.
• imeem – this is like virb or myspace for music lovers. i haven’t really jumped into this one mostly because i’m clinging to last.fm for dear life and honestly i’m not sure how many more social networks my life will support.
• last.fm – you get the plugin and listen to music. it logs what you’re listening to. then if you’re ever without your prized music library, you can login, and they have a radio that recommends music to you based on your listens. i’m trying this out now as we speak, but it’s tricky because i haven’t used their audio scrobbler in ages.