Pandora versus Last.fm: Battle of iPhone music apps
July 14, 2008 by J.T Dabbagian
Filed under Electronics
And so it was that they assembled at the battle of Applegeddon: Two of the biggest music greats fighting for your attention on the iPhone, Pandora and Last.fm, battling for the iFuture. Who’s better? Let’s find out.
Pandora is known for its ability to show you music you never existed, based on tastes in songs and artists that you already enjoy. From there, Pandora generates stations for you to listen to, that have songs that share qualities with the artist/song you picked. It even offers to let you buy the song off of iTunes or Amazon!
Last.fm, on the other hand, is more of a social network then a music discovery site. Its scribbler system allows you to submit the tracks you listen to the most on Last.fm’s site, so others can see what you’re into. Like Pandora, it can also play music for you, but lacks a lot of the discovery that Pandora offers on its app/site.
Both have extremely different uses, so I can’t really pick a particular app that’s better than the other. What do you think? Is one app better than the other?
I’m not an iPhone owner but from general experience with both Pandora and last.fm, my personal opinion is that Pandora kicks some last.fm rear!
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my experiences with both services, and through a “mash-up” net-based program cleverly called “Pandora.fm” I’ve been able to scrobble what I listen to in Pandora on last.fm. Now if there were a dedicated iPhone app for Pandora.fm, I would be extremely satisfied!