I’ve always liked Pandora, the music recommendation service that provides a radio station based on the seed of a track or an act that you like. I’ve always liked last.fm too, which offers a similar service.
Historically, last.fm has been the clear winner when it comes to Web 2.0ness (what do you mean that isn’t a proper word?). While Pandora employs experts to categorise music in order to provide tunes that have similar properties, last.fm looks at the tastes of people who have similar tastes to you, because you’ll probably like the stuff they like too. The wisdom of crowds when it comes to music, if you like, as opposed to the wisdom of editors.
Today Pandora introduced new features to bring it into the wacky world of the read/write web. Users now get to create a profile for themselves and find other users with similar tastes. You can share your personalised stations with your friends on the network. You can find people using their email address, or alternatively put in the name of an act or song to find fellow fans. Come join the Smiths army. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a way for me to link to my own, customised Smiths radio — hopefully the next move into taking this beyond a simple web app and into a fully socialised service a la YouTube.
In November, I reported that Pandora appeared to be losing to last.fm when it came to user numbers. I speculated then that the lack of ‘social web’ features was probably the most significant differentiator between the two services. It appears that the bosses at Pandora agreed.
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