Discovering new music with Last.fm and Pandora

I love music. I love finding new music. This week I found not one but TWO websites to help with that.

The first is Last.fm. I've been using this website for a while, but I just discovered it's full potential. Last.fm is a social networking site based solely around music. You can download a program called iScrobbler that will "scrobble", or log, everything you listen to. Last.fm creates a list of your top artists, and will show you other users who have musical tastes similar to yours.

What I didn't know they also had was internet radio. I don't know how I missed it, but instead of just downloading the iScrobbler program, you can just download the official Last.fm program, which combines the iScrobbler with a radio. It's as simple as putting in an artist you like, and a station will be created with similar types of music. You can also choose to listen to a station created based on all the music you've listened to, or the station of a friend. Don't like a song? Skip to the next one.


The second website is Pandora. I'd heard of Pandora many years ago, but never really used it, because back then it was pretty confusing. But I found it again the other day on somebody's Facebook, and I was amazed. Pandora is extremely similar to Last.fm, but it operates based on what it called "The Music Genome Project".

How does it work? Enter an artist or a song you like, and Pandora will create a radio station for you. But rather than offering just music, Pandora will explain to you why these artists are similar to each other. Each time you search for a new artist or song, a new station is created. Pandora also offers the option to shuffle stations so you can customize your listening experience even more.

Both websites are awesome. I'm a little upset that I have to choose between them. I suppose I could just use them both...