To display the most relevant entries to you in priority,
vote for the stories you are interested in
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and reject those that you are not interested in
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blog d'eMeRY  -
11 hours and 37 minutes ago
Mon pote Thomas Clément a su se renouveler avec une nouvelle et réelle intervieweuse
intelligente, Pandora, qui apporte une nouvelle dimension à ce bon show. Thomas se
révèle davantage aussi... Le couple fonctionne et va prendre de la bouteille...
Maintenant,...
|
iLounge | All Things iPod, iPhone, iTunes and beyond -
21 hours and 38 minutes ago
Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora Radio, has revealed that the company has surpassed 2 million
registered iPhone and iPod touch users. “We’re hearing all sorts of wonderful feedback
from listeners who are using it on their commute, jogging with it, plugging it into home audio
systems...you name it,” Westergren wrote in a post on the company’s blog. “And as
usual, offering all sorts of great feedback and suggestions....
|
Listening Post -
22 hours and 7 minutes ago
 Forrester has new predictions about the
future of music. Apparently, 41 percent of music sales will be digital by 2013. As previous
studies have shown, the increase in digital sales will not make up for the ongoing decline in CD
sales, and so as a result, the music market will shrink at a compound annual growth rate of
0.8, dropping to $9.8 billion in 2013. Sales in 2008, by comparison, are expected to total $10.2
billion.
A book I'm reading has made me wary about such predictions. Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Black Swan
teaches that it's folly to try to predict the future based on the past because there are too many
unknowable variables at play, and because we never truly know the past in the first place. The
events that matter most -- so-called "black swans" such as the original Napster -- are impossible
to predict. Therefore, Taleb says, we must be vigilant against trusting predictions while
preparing for inevitable unknowns.
Forrester's predictions make a certain amount of sense. We all know CD sales are sinking from
their artificially high levels in the late nineties, and it stands to reason that digital sales
are increasing, as the population moves online for music and other needs. But its prediction
fails to take into account the possibility of another Napster, another black swan.
What if WiFi, cellular and other networks improve to the point where it will no longer be
necessary to own music at all -- point when buying a download is seen as a waste of disk space,
the same way buying a CD is considered by some to be a waste of apartment space? For instance, I
can already hear whatever I want, whenever I want, and nearly wherever I want, using SeeqPod on the iPhone.
In the next five years, music sales could be upset by another shift on the level of Napster with
dire implications for Forrester's predictions, which are already somewhat restricted by their
focus on music sales as opposed to the music market in general. (Ad-supported music -- the
lifeblood of MySpace and other high-profile ventures -- does not appear to factor into
Forrester's forecast.)
That said, the study does tell us some interesting things about how people are consuming music
today. "Paying downloaders are shifting an average of 60 percent of their music spending to
digital formats," a spokeswoman quoted the study as finding via email, which means that just
because music buyers try digital downloads doesn't mean they abandon other formats.
The study also found that over-the-air (OTA) downloads are unlikely to have a significant impact
on sales during in this timeframe. It predicts that the entire market for OTA downloads "will
amount to less than $300 million in 2013." By comparison, the ringtone market in 2007 was worth
1.1 billion in Europe alone.
By that measure, ad-supported music streaming services like Pandora and imeem have ample opportunity for
expansion as smartphone adoption rises in the near future, because they won't be competing much
with OTA downloads. But on the whole, it's anybody's guess what the music market will look like
in five years.
Photo: grytr
 
      |
Mashable! -
1 days and 1 hours ago
The moment is here. After more than 50,000 nominations and in excess of 80,000 verified votes
from the web community, we’re pleased to announce the finalists in the Open Web Awards, an open, international contest to find
the web’s best sites and services. Congratulations to all the finalists!
You have until midnight PST on December 14th to pick the winners. Winners receive the Open Web
Awards sculpture (courtesy of Zazzle), coverage on Mashable and
partner blogs and inclusion in press mentions of the contest.
The winners will be announced on Tuesday, December 16th.
VOTE NOW: One Vote Per Category Per Day
Already know who you’re voting for? Use the widget below to cast your vote for the Open Web
Awards!
Feel free to embed this widget on your own blog or website by clicking the “Grab
This” button! For a timeline, rules and information on our 100+ blog partners, please visit the Open Web Awards site.
The Finalists: The Full List
Here they are, the companies you picked as the cream of the web’s crop.
Mainstream & Large Scale Social Networks Netlog http://netlog.com/ Platinum Lounge http://www.platinumlounge.com/ Twitter http://twitter.com/
Embeddable Widgets Clearspring http://www.clearspring.com/ Qoof http://www.qoof.com/ Sprout http://sproutbuilder.com/
Blog Plugins AddThis http://addthis.com/
ShareThis http://sharethis.com/ Zemanta
http://www.zemanta.com/
Social News Help a Reporter Out http://www.helpareporter.com/ Hubdub http://www.hubdub.com/ regator http://regator.com/
Social Networking Applications Artition http://www.artition.com/ Digsby http://www.digsby.com Ping.fm http://ping.fm/
Social Bookmarking AddThis http://addthis.com/
Diigo http://www.diigo.com/ ShareThis
http://sharethis.com/
Search & Social Search Artiklz http://www.artiklz.com/ findingDulcinea http://www.findingdulcinea.com/ Scour http://www.scour.com/
Sports & Fitness FitFiend http://www.fitfiend.com/ Gyminee http://www.gyminee.com/ OneSeason http://www.oneseason.com/
Photo Sharing flickr http://www.flickr.com/
ipernity http://www.ipernity.com/ TinyPic
http://tinypic.com/
Video Sharing ffwd http://www.ffwd.com/ Vimeo
http://www.vimeo.com/ YouTube http://www.youtube.com/
Start Pages Google http://www.google.com/
iGoogle http://www.google.com/ig Yahoo!
http://yahoo.com/
Places & Events City Data http://www.city-data.com/ Doodle http://www.doodle.com/ Muchmor http://www.muchmormagazine.com/
Travel CouchSurfing http://www.couchsurfing.com/ GeckoGo http://www.geckogo.com/ Spotted by Locals http://www.spottedbylocals.com/
Music Last.fm http://www.last.fm/ NoiseTrade
https://www.noisetrade.com/ Pandora
http://www.pandora.com/
Social Shopping A Full Cup http://www.afullcup.com/ Pikaba http://www.pikaba.com/ Tigerbow http://www.tigerbow.com/
Fashion Chictini http://www.chictini.com/
Coolspotters http://coolspotters.com/
Polyvore http://www.polyvore.com
Celebrity & Gossip Bollyscoops http://bollyscoops.com/ Oh No They Didn’t http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/ Superficial Gallery http://www.superficialgallery.com/
Mobile Applications Evernote http://evernote.com/ MocoSpace http://www.mocospace.com/ Viigo http://viigo.com/
Dating & Romance DateHookup http://www.datehookup.com/ SpeedDate http://www.speeddate.com/ zoosk http://www.zoosk.com/
Wiki Encyclopedia Dramatica http://encyclopediadramatica.com wikiHow http://www.wikihow.com/ Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org/
Politics CreateDebate http://www.createdebate.com/ Politics4all http://www.politics4all.com/ PreciseNews http://www.precisenews.us/
How-to A Full Cup http://www.afullcup.com/
College-Cram http://www.college-cram.com/ Howcast http://www.howcast.com/
Environmental ecomii http://www.ecomii.com/
gazelle http://www.gazelle.com/ neighBorrow
http://neighborrow.com/
Non-Profit Causes DiscoverScholars http://discoverscholars.org/ SocialVibe http://www.socialvibe.com/ Stop Political Calls http://stoppoliticalcalls.org/
Online Games Armor Games http://armorgames.com/ Playfish http://www.playfish.com/ Powerpets http://powerpets.com/
Niche Social Networks Lymabean http://www.lymabean.com/ The Star Tracker http://www.thestartracker.com/ Wadja http://us.wadja.com/ Top Tip For Finalists
You got through? Congratulations! Did you know you can create a custom version of our voting
widget above to post to your company blog or website? Just visit the Open Web Awards Widget Creator and check the box
to preset a category or company. This means your fans only need to enter an email address to vote
- simple!
Start Canvassing for YOUR Candidate!
Want others to vote for your favorite site? Of course you do! Why not leave a comment here and on
any of our international partner blogs
encouraging other readers to add their support? The more you promote your candidate across these
blogs, the more likely it is for your site to win!
OWA Sponsors Love The Web
The Open Web Awards is made possible by our sponsors. By supporting the Open Web Awards, these
companies reward and encourage innovative web technologies. We can’t thank them enough for
sharing our passion: building great web companies.
Platinum Partner
“PartnerUp brings small business and social networking together to create
a community where entrepreneurs find the people, resources and information to grow their
businesses.”
Gold Sponsors
“iStockphoto is the world’s leading image market and a
revenue-sharing social network. Browse 3.5 million images and videos starting at $1 or become a
contributor.”
“With Quintura’s advanced visual-based search and analytics
solution, content publishers can increase site usage while creating new ad revenues”
Prize Sponsor
“Infinite and Instant, Zazzle is the only on-demand retail platform for consumers and major
brands, offering billions of retail quality, one-of-a-kind products, most of which are produced
within 24 hours.”
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
Online Competition Timeline
Outline:
Rules for Voting and Nominations
Open Web Awards: Vote
and We’ll Shut Up
Mashable Presents The 2nd
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Open Web Awards - Vote for Your
Favorite Large Social Network
Call for Video
Submissions for Enterprise 2.0 LaunchPad - Deadline is Tomorrow!
Open Web Awards - Vote for Your
Favorite Niche Social Network
          |
The Inquirer FR -
1 days and 2 hours ago
La bande de fruités de Cappuccino a publié le best of des
applications aPhone les plus téléchargées de l’année.
L’Itunes App Store n’a été lancé qu’en milieu
d’année et les aPhonatiques téléchargent à un rythme de deux
millions d’applications par jour.
Le téléchargement payant le plus populaire a été Koi Pond,
une étrange simulation de marre aux canards (mais avec des poissons) facturée
0,59£ (0,70€) de l’autre côté de la Manche. Puis
suivent Texas Hold-’em, Moto Chaser et Super Monkey Ball.
Au rayon des gratuits, les téléchargements les plus populaires ont en tête
Pandora Radio (qui n’est pas disponible en Europe). Facebook vient en
deuxième position, et le nouveau venu Google Earth se hisse dans le Top 10
après seulement deux mois de disponibilité.
Au rayon des applications gratuites les plus téléchargées,
l’improbable Flashlight fournit un écran blanc permettant d’y voir
dans le noir avec son téléphone. Si, si.
S’il y en a qui ont vraiment du temps à perdre, ils peuvent toujours se taper toute
la liste ici (mais il faudra avoir installé Itunes auparavant).
Traduction et adaptation d’un article de Willy Ferret pour INQ.
   
 |
Techmeme -
1 days and 3 hours ago
 Tim Westergren /
Pandora:
2,000,000
Pandora iPhone users!!! — At 10:04am this morning we hit 2,000,000
registered iPhone Pandora users! — We're hearing all sorts of wonderful
feedback from listeners who are using it on their commute, jogging with it, plugging it into home
audio systems...you name it.
|
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) -
1 days and 4 hours ago
pFiled under: a href="http://www.tuaw.com/category/itunes-store/" rel="tag"iTS/a, a
href="http://www.tuaw.com/category/itunes/" rel="tag"iTunes/a/pdiv align="center"img width="425"
vspace="8" hspace="8" height="82" border="0" alt=""
src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tuaw.com/media/2008/12/itunes_itunes-shows-off-the-best-of-2008_cb1723.jpg"
/br //div Apple has created a "Best of 2008" [a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewGrouping?id=26300"iTunes link/a]
section in the iTunes Store. On this page, Apple lets everyone know what the top-downloaded a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewCustomPage?name=pageiTunes2008_TV"TV
Shows/a, a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewMix?id=296316057amp;s=143441amp;wm=1"Music/a,
a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewCustomPage?name=pageiTunes2008_Movies"Movies/a,
a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewCustomPage?name=pageiTunes2008_Apps"Apps/a,
a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewCustomPage?name=pageiTunes2008_Podcasts"Podcasts/a,
and a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewCustomPage?name=pageiTunes2008_Audiobooks"Audiobooks/a
are. br /br /Among the top paid iPhone applications are a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=286420263amp;mt=8"Koi
Pond/a, a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284602850amp;mt=8"Texas
Hold'em/a, and a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284881537amp;mt=8"Moto
Chaser/a. Among the top free iPhone applications are a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284035177amp;mt=8"Pandora/a,
a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284882215amp;mt=8"Facebook/a,
and a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284972147amp;mt=8"Tap
Tap Revenge/a. There's also a a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewCustomPage?name=pageiTunes2008_Podcasts"top
downloaded podcast/a list. We didn't quite make the top downloaded podcasts list, but hey, there's
always next year. br /br /So, if you're looking to find some of the best online content for 2008,
look no further than iTunes. You can a
href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewGrouping?id=26300"click here/a to visit
the iTunes Best of 2008 section.p style="padding:5px;clear:both;"a
href="http://www.tuaw.com"TUAW/aa
href="http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/03/itunes-shows-off-the-best-of-2008/"iTunes shows off the best
of 2008/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.tuaw.com"The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)/a
on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our a
href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a.br style="clear:both;"/ph6
style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding:
0;"/h6a
href=http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewGrouping?id=26300Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a
href="http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/03/itunes-shows-off-the-best-of-2008/" rel="bookmark"
title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a
href="http://www.tuaw.com/forward/1389301/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email
this/anbsp;|nbsp;a
href="http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/03/itunes-shows-off-the-best-of-2008/#comments" title="View
reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa
href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/tUVrSGoGJk-hdpRyN0X0SSx44Vo/a"img
src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/tUVrSGoGJk-hdpRyN0X0SSx44Vo/i" border="0"
ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?a=xJwRfe9x"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?i=xJwRfe9x" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?a=b8eAgXsC"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?i=b8eAgXsC" border="0"/img/a /divimg
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/tuaw/~4/dP__EA_9QnI" height="1" width="1"/
|
MacDailyNews -
1 days and 4 hours ago
Music discovery service Pandora has confirmed two million iPhone users have downloaded...
 |
paidContent.org -
1 days and 10 hours ago
pimg src="http://paidcontent.org/images/uploads/launchcast_johnlegend.png" alt="image"
align="right" width="210" height="112" /Yahoo has turned to CBS to help keep its a
href="http://music.yahoo.com/launchcast/" title="LaunchCAST"LAUNCHcast/a streaming radio service
alive. As part of the new partnership, a href="http://www.cbsradio.com/index.html" title="CBS
Radio"CBS Radio/a will provide the player and handle the ad sales for LAUNCHcast, and various CBS
(a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=CBS" class="ticker"
title="CBS"NYSE: CBS/a) stations will be available on Yahoo (a
href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=YHOO" class="ticker"
title="YHOO"NSDQ: YHOO/a) Music. Yahoo will also incorporate more radio content throughout its news
and sports portals. It's the latest move in Yahoo's strategy to a
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-yahoo-opens-up" title=""completely open"""completely
open"/a its music operations to other services: the company recently a
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-yahoo-music-rhapsody-partner-for-music-search-paired-with-full-track-st"
title="launched an enhanced music search service with Rhapsody"launched an enhanced music search
service with Rhapsody/a (the same company it a
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-yahoo-switches-premium-music-service-to-realnetworks-rhapsody"
title="offloaded its premium music subscription business to"offloaded its premium music
subscription business to /a in February).nbsp; /p p Yahoo started shifting the focus away from
LAUNCHcast a
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-citing-steep-royalty-payments-aol-and-yahoo-consider-dropping-streaming"
title="late last year"late last year/a, plagued by the higher royalty fees that threatened to a
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-will-pandora-play-the-end-soon-royalty-rate-hikes-could-be-its-demise"
title="shut smaller Webcasters like Pandora down"shut smaller Webcasters like Pandora down/a.
Michael Spiegelman, head of Yahoo Music said CBS came courting at the most opportune time: "We
didn't want to scale down or put up a lot of barriers with LAUNCHcast, but the economics of online
radio had changed. It made sense to have a partner like CBS Radio ... They've made the investment
in the infrastructure, the platform and the sales force to operate in a sustainable way." /p p CBS
Radio's ad sales expertise is a big plus: it has a 1,600-member sales team, can sell ads on
national and local levels, and has a a
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-cbs-backed-targetspot-buys-radio-ad-rep-firm-ronning-lipset"
title="vested interest"vested interest/a in TargetSpot, the ad technology firm that can serve
hypertargeted ads into various types of streaming media. CBS also has experience with a partnership
of this size, as it a
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-aol-and-cbs-unite-radio-networks-cbs-to-manage-ad-sales-across-350-chan"
title="merged its online radio network with AOL's"merged its online radio network with AOL's/a back
in March.nbsp; /p pstrongRelated/strong/p ul class="related" lia
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-citing-steep-royalty-payments-aol-and-yahoo-consider-dropping-streaming"Citing
Steep Royalty Payments, AOL And Yahoo Could Consider Dropping Streaming Radio Services/a/li lia
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-yahoo-opens-up/"Yahoo Press Day: Yahoo Music Opens Up,
Third-Party Content, Home Page Tweaks/a/li lia
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-yahoo-not-only-shutting-music-store-but-orphaning-drm-buyers/"Yahoo
Not Only Shutting Music Store, But Orphaning DRM Buyers/a/li /ul piCheck out the best business jobs
in digital media. a href="http://jobs.paidcontent.org/"Go here/a for paidContent.org Job Board./i/p
pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=qm3sqS"img
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=qm3sqS" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a
href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=gMK6O"img
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=gMK6O" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=SRMxO"img
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=SRMxO" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=fL2ao"img
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=fL2ao" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=apOUO"img
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=apOUO" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=UygHO"img
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=UygHO" border="0"/img/a /divimg
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/473502578" height="1" width="1"/
|
Mashable! -
1 days and 17 hours ago
 Matt Singley is a
business process advisor that focuses on social media and UGC sociology. He authors a blog,
Singley’s Blog
Thoughts, about new (and sometimes old) technologies that can help organizations get
ahead.
Each morning you get an obscenely-sized coffee, open your email and turn on your favorite music
to lean into the upcoming workday. You are a part of an ever increasing group that starts their
day with music and listens until it’s time to go to sleep. In this exploding market of
online streaming audio, two companies are leading the way, fighting for a position at the top and
looking to earn your loyalty:Â Pandora and Last.fm.
From a total traffic perspective the sites appear to be pretty close, with Pandora slightly overtaking Last.fm in the
early part of 2008. Â A closer look at the data however reveals that within the United
States, Pandora is dominating in site traffic by almost double. Why the big difference stateside
and elsewhere? Pandora is only offered to customers within the U.S. If you are an international reader, it appears the choice for
you is obvious; if not, read on.
It’s All About the Music
Let’s get right down to the music selection. I chose a wild mix of genre and popularity and
was happy to see that both services not only recognized each artist but also seemed to really
understand the type of music that each represented. Pandora started each channel with a song from
the artist I selected, but Last.fm played for over an hour and never included them. I love
listening to music while I work, so this part of the test was easy for me…I just listened
to a lot of music on each service, all day long.
It wasn’t long before I came up with a sweeping generalization: Last.fm plays more Indie
music, Pandora leans toward mainstream. As I continued to listen to each channel, I found myself
going back to Pandora more and more. The music that was being selected for me just seemed better,
it really seemed to understand what I liked. I think what sealed it for me was the inclusion of
“Where Is My Mind?” by the Pixies in my Death Cab station. It just felt right.
Each service builds a custom channel based on artists or songs that you chose, and plays music
that they think you will like. From an ease-of-use standpoint Pandora came out of the gate
strong, I was signed up and listening to songs in less than a minute. I had to stumble around
just a bit longer to get going with Last.fm, although it was still a mostly straightforward
process.
A Look Under the Hood
With both Pandora and Last.fm working hard to create custom playlists for you, it’s
important to take a quick look at the technology that is driving these two sites.
 Last.fm uses a technique called scrobbling to determine which songs rise to the top and which sink.
 Scrobbling begins by downloading their software and ranking the songs that you like.
With millions of songs being scrobbled every day, this is a great way to crowdsource popularity.
From the Last.fm website:
Millions of songs are scrobbled every day. This data helps Last.fm to organise and recommend
music to people; we use it to create personalised radio stations, and a lot more besides.
Pandora selects music based on The Music
Genome Project®, which is the work of “a group of musicians and
music-loving technologists.” This seems to be more of an artisan effort, with this group
listening to and defining the music, as opposed to the crowdsourcing method. Â
Since we started back in 2000, we’ve carefully listened to the songs of tens of thousands
of different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of
each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to
include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.
So which method of determining what you will like is better? Do millions of ratings on songs
create a better experience for the listener, or does a select group of people tediously pouring
over individual songs yield better results? Â Before getting to the bottom line, I
want to take a look at more of the overall experience.
User Interface
Looking at the different UIs of the sites, I was naturally drawn to Pandora. The mostly Flash
media player seemed a lot easier to use, and frankly a little sexier than the average looking
player offered by the competitor. I was not disappointed with the Pandora interface, as I
listened to songs I was able to click through to more information about the artists, album, songs
and fans of the music all within the same page. Finding similar information over at Last.fm was
certainly possible, but required separate page loads for each category that I wanted to find out
about.
In terms of social networking, Last.fm is the clear leader. The media player page is set up like
a blog that you can scroll down and leave a “shout” about the track as well as look
through what others are saying. Last.fm also does a brilliant job of incorporating events into
the play page, such as upcoming concerts and events. Pandora simply doesn’t offer this kind
of service.
iPhone Apps
Pandora and Last.fm both have created iPhone apps that are free. Comments can be made about
aesthetics and function, but Pandora easily won the battle with response time. The Last.fm app seemed to slow down quite a bit
as I loaded channels but I didn’t have this problem with Pandora, which loaded almost instantly every time.
Final Thoughts
Designs will change, apps will get updated and new algorithms will be created, but in the end
it’s all about the music. Both services offer great things for their users, but one
consistently played tunes that I really like. Since it really is all about the music, I’m
picking Pandora as the winner in this head to
head battle.
Which do you prefer? Tell us in the comments.
Image courtesy of iStockPhoto, bns124
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
Last.fm and
Pandora - Music Discovery Services
Last.fm versus Pandora
(Continued)
Rumor: Pandora Adding
Videos?
Last.fm Partners with Warner
Podcast
With Pandora Founder Tim Westergren
Pandora’s A Social
Climber: Major Upgrades Look Like Last.fm, Napster
Pandora Now Free!
     |
Read/WriteWeb -
1 days and 19 hours ago
pimg alt="bowiesmall.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/bowiesmall.jpg" width="150"
height="75" Whether it's with your family, your co-workers or your clients - many of us like to
share the excitement we have about the new, social web with others. What do emyou/em show other
people to demonstrate how powerful, and yet easy to use, this new world of technology really is?/p
pWe asked our staff and a number of other advanced social web users what the one thing is that they
like most to show people who are less experienced with the web than they are. Some of our favorite
responses are below, maybe they'll give you some fresh ideas about how to have that big
conversation with the people in your life - maybe some of them will even be new for you. /p p
align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12790amp;cb=12790'
target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12790amp;n=12790' border='0'
alt='' align="right" //a/p pWe think this is more than just fun to talk about. We think those
moments of sharing and discovery of the best basic new apps offer lessons to learn about
contemporary human psychology./p h2The Big Picture/h2 centerimg alt="CoolirisScreen.jpg"
src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/CoolirisScreen.jpg" width="489" height="298" /center Most
of the people we talked to said they showed their friends and family something that falls into one
of three categories: syndication, visualization or music. We agree that these are great approaches
for turning people on to the new web. pThere were a number of people who said that showing people
how to use browser tabs made a big difference. (This author has a hard time comprehending that, to
be honest.) Communications consultant a href="http://twitter.com/JordanGuthmann"Jordan Guthman/a
says he likes to show people Google's "advanced search" and in particular the option to limit
searches to content posted within the last 24 hours. (I must admit that's a new one to me!) That
probably helps illustrate that the new web is always fresh and changing./p pBetsy Weber works at a
href="http://techsmith.com"TechSmith/a, makers of screen casting programs Camtasia and Jing, tools
people use to share new things about the web with each other every day. Betsy says she likes to
show people a href="http://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/39"Firefox Mouse Gestures/a. Macbook
Pro owners should check out the similar multi-touch command app a
href="http://wcrawford.org/2008/02/28/everytime-i-think-about-you-i-touch-my-cell/"MultiClutch/a.
Both of these are big time savers, helping users navigate quickly through the expansive web./p
h2Useful: Syndication/h2 pSyndication and RSS are life changing stuff, so we weren't surprised to
that many people we talked to said that some variation of RSS is the first thing they show people.
/p pa href="http://alerts.google.com"Google Alerts/a are very popular but they aren't the only way
to introduce people to the subscribable web. (This season's newest addition to the service - a
rhef="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_use_the_new_google_web_feeds.php"RSS feeds for
Google Alerts/a, is pretty cool though.)/p pstrongUsing RSS feeds helps users move beyond stumbling
through a handful of websites, caught unaware of emerging information unless by chance visits to
sites. It puts us in command of a personalized information flow, increased in timeliness and
breadth by orders of magnitude over our old browsing habits./strong/p pPR pro a
href="http://www.maneydigital.com/"Mike Maney/a says he starts with an RSS reader (specifically,
NetNewsWire from a href="http://newsgator.com"Newsgator/a) because it's "amazing watching people
immediately grok the power of the web coming to them." We've found too that simply showing people a
filled-up RSS reader turns on light bulbs immediately. Talking about the idea, not so much. /p pa
href="http://www.tinyscreenfuls.com/"Josh Bancroft/a checks out cool new things and then shows them
to other people for a living, at Intel. He likes to start people out with the Common Craft video a
href="http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english"RSS in Plain English/a. We like that video a
lot, too.br / centerobject type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="260" width="320"
data="http://www.youtube.com/v/0klgLsSxGsUamp;rel=0" id="VideoPlayback" br / param name="movie"
value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0klgLsSxGsUamp;rel=0" /br / param name="allowScriptAcess"
value="sameDomain"/br / param name="quality" value="best"/br / param name="bgcolor"
value="#FFFFFF"/br / param name="scale" value="noScale"/br / param name="salign" value="TL"/br /
param name="FlashVars" value="playerMode=embedded" /br / param name="wmode" value="transparent" /br
/ /object/centerbr / a href="http://google.com/ig"iGoogle/a is another popular way to show off
syndication technology and it comes with the convenience and brand familiarity of Google. a
href="http://netvibes.com"Netvibes/a, possibly the easiest "start page" to customize, is also a
favorite to show new users./p pSocialText's Schott Schnaars says a
href="http://scottschnaars.com/blog/?p=651"he pointed his family to FriendFeed/a, where they can
find all of his activity syndicated in one place. That makes a lot of sense to us, though we
suspect that a separate lifestreaming account might best keep family from being overwhelmed by too
much work-related information they aren't interested in./p pstrongemMarshall's Pick/em/strong/p
pWhat do I like to show people to turn them on to syndication? I generally show them a
href="http://netvibes.com"Netvibes/a or a href="http://google.com/ig"iGoogle/a but after that, I
like to show them how to find feeds to fill those pages up with. There's no better way to do that
than with Yahoo's social bookmarking service a href="http://delicious.com"Delicious/a.
Specifically, I like to show them links like a
href="http://delicious.com/tag/sports+blog"http://delicious.com/tag/TopicOfInterest+blog/a. Check
out the most popular links there and you'll find some of the best blogs on whatever your topic of
interest is. We discussed this and similar strategies in a post here titled a
href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/identify_top_blogs.php"Comparing Six Ways to Find Top
Blogs in Any Niche/a./p pShow people how to find and subscribe to the top blogs on topics they are
interested in and most people will be quickly engaged. It's really useful - far more useful than
platitudes about "joining the conversation." Most people don't know where to look to find the
conversation. Show them and they get really excited./p h2Fun: Visualization and Music/h2 pReading
blogs and feeds a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/reading_blogs_at_work.php"may be good
for work/a but work alone can sustain no one. Nor can it sustain most peoples' interest in all the
new things going on online./p pA number of people that we asked said that Google Maps, Earth and
Streetview were their favorite things to show new users. Those certainly make a big impression.
That's especially true with the a
href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_maps_and_street_view_un.php"new redesign of
Google Maps and Streetview/a. For the sheer power of Google's view of the globe to be compacted
down into my little browser is truly awe inspiring./p pimg
src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/aldersthousepic.jpg"/p pLooking at images of our world and
the streets we live on isn't the only visualization that's easy to get excited about, though.
Hardware blogger a href="http://mediaexperiences2go.com/"Mari Silbey/a says she shows people image
browser a href="http://www.cooliris.com/"CoolIris/a. That's fast becoming a very popular browser
extension./p pNone of those visualization tools offer quite the feeling of teeming humanity that
journalist a href="http://www.thisfrenchlife.com/"Craig McGinty's/a favorite, a
href="http://twittervision.com/"TwitterVision/a, does. This world map of real time Twitter messages
immediately communicates that there are everyday people all around the world communicating with new
online tools, all day long. It's quite compelling./p pimg alt="twittervisionscreen.jpg"
src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/twittervisionscreen.jpg" width="610" height="202"/p pWhile
you're perusing all this imagery, why not listen to some music in the background? A number of
people we asked said that they liked to show people music recommendation sites a
href="http://pandora.com"Pandora/a and a href="http://last.fm"Last.fm/a or MP3 blog aggregator a
href="http://hypem.com"Hype Machine/a. /p pShowing people not just free and legal music online, but
free and legal music where the discovery is powered by algorithms, network effects and economies of
scale - that's an exciting experience for almost anyone. It still excites me every time I visit
these sites and think about what's going on./p h2Perspective: History/h2 pAll of these tools and
toys that we show people to share our excitement about the new web deserve some amount of
criticism, as well, for a balanced perspective. The wisdom of the crowd may not be the best way to
have your editorial decisions made in music, news or other content. Google's omniscience warrants
some serious skepticism. RSS increases information consumption but may very well cost us
contemplation./p pWe believe that these tools are still worth using, though. When used well, they
give us super-powers as information workers. Those powers can be used for good./p pThere was a time
in history when access to knowledge came in the form of monthly rides on a horse into the local
town where the library was located. Those times had their up-sides, but our relationship to this
kind of knowledge about the world was not one of them./p pNone the less, life before Web 2.0, life
before the internet, certainly had a lot to offer. The Digital Divide not withstanding, we who live
in many parts of the world will find ourselves, relatively soon, with no one in our lives who
remembers what the world was like before the internet. That will be a significant loss for our
collective knowledge./p pPerhaps talking to people who do not live in the web, showing them what
we're excited about, can be a learning experience for us as well as for them./p pstrongWhat about
you? What do you like to show people first who are unfamiliar with all of this?/strong Let us know
in comments; those wonder-filled moments of discovery are fun to think about. Perhaps it's the
memory of that high that keeps so many of us tuned in to all the new applications that launch every
day - the hope that we will find "another RSS," another Pandora/Last.fm, another game changer that
we couldn't even imagine before it came into our lives./p stronga
href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/first_apps_for_new_users.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong
pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/PiVHJa3RxHo1AmO1kftbfqRPFL8/a"img
src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/PiVHJa3RxHo1AmO1kftbfqRPFL8/i" border="0"
ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=FP6A6Z4J"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1035" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=1wbPHu1Z"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a
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src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=PqyD5JKs" border="0"/img/a a
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src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=1rL74gMv" border="0"/img/a a
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src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=Ujw3aa0x" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=s2MkAS4S"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=52" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=iQPLMTKk"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1034" border="0"/img/a /divimg
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/cJiA_Sk8M_k" height="1" width="1"/
|
Gizmodo -
1 days and 22 hours ago
pimg src="http://gizmodo.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/07/Appstore_01.jpg" width="494"
height="322" style="display:block;" /With Apple hitting the 10,000 app milestone, they've just
released the stats for the most downloaded apps in a number of categories. And boy, they sure do
prove that you people like frivolous, stupid crap on your iPhones./p pSeriously, iKoi Pond/i is the
top paid app overall? No wonder we're in a recession, all that money spent on Koi Pond could have
bailed out one of the big three automakers. And why isn't a
href="http://gizmodo.com/5061004/brian-enos-bloom-raises-the-bar-for-musical-iphone-apps"Bloom/a in
the top music apps? Get on board with Bloom, people./p pHere's the full rundown:/p pbTop Paid Apps
(Overall):/bbr 1. Koi Pondbr 2. Texas Hold’embr 3. Moto Chaserbr 4. Crash Bandicoot: Nitro
Kart 3dbr 5. Super Monkey Ballbr 6. Cro-Mag Rallybr 7. Enigmo (Pangea)br 8. Pocket Guitarbr 9.
Recorderbr 10. iBeer/p pbTop 10 Free Downloads (Overall)/bbr 1. Pandora Radiobr 2. Facebookbr 3.
Tap Tap Revengebr 4. Shazambr 5. Labryinth Lite Editionbr 6. Remotebr 7. Google Earthbr 8.
Lightsaber Unleashedbr 9. AIMbr 10. Urban Spoon/p pbTop Paid Games:/bbr 1. Texas Hold’embr 2.
Moto Chaserbr 3. Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3dbr 4. Super Monkey Ballbr 5. Cro-Mag Rallybr 6.
Enigmobr 7. Air Hockeybr 8. Bejeweled 2br 9. Flick Bowlingbr 10. Line Rider iRide/p pbTop Free
Games:/bbr 1. Tap Tap Revengebr 2. Labrynth Lite Editionbr 3. Sol Free Solitairebr 4. iBowlbr 5.
Pac-Man Litebr 6. Touch Hockey:FS5br 7. Cannon Challengebr 8. Audi A4 Driving Challengebr 9.
Sudokubr 10. reMovem/p pbTop Paid Entertainment:/bbr 1. Koi Pondbr 2. iBeerbr 3. iChalkybr 4. Face
Melterbr 5. iFishbr 6. TouchScanbr 7. What’s on TV?br 8. Pocket Pianobr 9. Sketchesbr 10.
OneTap Movies/p pbTop Free Entertainment:/bbr 1. Remotebr 2. Lightsaber Unleashedbr 3. i.TVbr 4.
BubbleWrapbr 5. Moviesbr 6. iDoodle 2 litebr 7. Showtimesbr 8. Now Playingbr 9. Scribblebr 10.
Crazy Pumpkin/p pbTop Paid Utilities:/bbr 1. Units (crossroad solutions)br 2. A Levelbr 3. Air
Mousebr 4. Fake Callsbr 5. Voice Recordbr 6. Clinometerbr 7. Spell Checkbr 8. Speed Dialbr 9.
FileMagnetbr 10. iNetwork Speed Test/p pbTop Free Utilities/bbr 1. Flashlightbr 2. myLite
Flashlightbr 3. Say Who - Dialerbr 4. Units (TheMacBox)br 5. Compass Freebr 6. Alarm Freebr 7. A
Free Levelbr 8. Moleculesbr 9. Speed Testbr 10. myLighter/p pbTop Paid Social Networking:/bbr 1.
MobileChatbr 2. BeejiveIMbr 3. Quipbr 4. Rooms - Your Mobile Chat Clientbr 5. Twitterific Premiumbr
6. Flutterbr 7. Twittelator Probr 8. mBoxMailbr 9. Secretsbr 10. hiCard - Suite/p pbTop Free Social
Networking:/bbr 1. Facebookbr 2. AIMbr 3. Myspace Mobilebr 4. IM+ Litebr 5. Looptbr 6. Fringbr 7.
Palringo IMbr 8. Earthscapebr 9. Twitterificbr 10. Avatar/p pbTop Paid Music:/bbr 1. PocketGuitarbr
2. Drum Kitbr 3. Ocarinabr 4. Pianistbr 5. Bandbr 6. Tuner Internet Radiobr 7. Beat Makerbr 8.
Guitar Toolkitbr 9. Harmonicabr 10. Guitarist/p pbTop Free Music:/bbr 1. Pandora Radiobr 2.
Shazambr 3. AOL Radiobr 4. Midomibr 5. Mini Pianobr 6. iheart Radiobr 7. MixMeister Scratchbr 8.
FlyCast Mobile Radiobr 9. Last.FMbr 10. DigiDrummer Lite [a
href="http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2008/12/02/apple-announces-top-10-iphone-app-downloads-of-2008/"MobileCrunch/a]/p
br style="clear: both;"/ a
href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=1ac5e9df09f3eb36a78bd9c5a43786e3p=1"img alt=""
style="border: 0;" border="0"
src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=1ac5e9df09f3eb36a78bd9c5a43786e3p=1"//a img
src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=1ac5e9df09f3eb36a78bd9c5a43786e3" style="display:
none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=ypcRKSY8"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a
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| |
