Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably know about Pandora Internet Radio by now. I have tried some of the other online radio and social music sites, and none of them quite compare to Pandora, even with my complaints I still have about the service. Pandora limits you in ways that seem a little frustrating, but I think their user interface and the overall experience of the site is one of the best around. Pandora limits the amount of stations you can create, and it your stations are inside a narrow little scroll window, these two items were my main complaints when using it in the past. They also have a good amount of large advertisements on the site, which can be annoying. Compared to other sites though, Pandora is the one with the best features and interface. They have a good deal of hardware compatibility for listening to online radio in places other than your computer’s web browser, like Pandora in the home, or Pandora on your mobile phone, which just a few other online radio sites can say they have.
The other sites I frequent for finding new artists and music to listen to include the following:
Digitally Imported (DI.FM), SKY.FM, and JazzRadio.com – These three sites, I believe are all under the same ownership, and they rock! They have the greatest selection of genre organized stations, some stations even have live DJ’s spinning on them at certain hours. JazzRadio is a newer one and so far I love it. SKY.FM includes more classical types of music, while DI.FM has more modern popular styles on it. Very few advertisements, very few negative remarks, as you can stream their stations in a number of different applications, and put the radio stream into mostly any music player that you’re comfortable with.
http://www.di.fm
http://www.sky.fm
http://www.jazzradio.com
Honorable mention sites are sites that on one hand are doing things that are fairly revolutionary, but for one reason or another, I personally just can’t stand many things about these site for regular online radio listening usage.
http://www.last.fm – I’ve been trying to use this one more lately, it is nice, but there are things I do not like about its radio features. Definitely cool for the social features, and the scrobbler application that uploads what you’re currently listening to, and displays it on your profile.
http://www.playlist.com –Playlist crawls the web for songs that are uploaded to servers. You search and if the artist/song you want is found, playlist then allows you to pick and choose what you want to play into your own custom playlists. Cool concept, poorly executed in some ways. Overrun with ads and annoying interface glitches. Upside is you can find lots of stuff, and play it immediately, if you want to hear a specific song at any given time.
http://www.slacker.com – seems like a cheap imitation of Pandora, have not used it long enough to know for sure.
Of course, you may end up deciding you want to purchase some of the music you discover on online radio. Most of these sites are also doing their part for the music industry and artists as far as offering listeners a chance to buy the music that is playing. Most music can be found on popular online music stores such as the ones below, though rarer stuff you may have to go to smaller independent sites to find legal downloads of the music.
http://www.amazon.com (my favorite)
http://www.rhapsody.com
http://www.itunes.com