It’s hard to just stuff like that without really digging in and doing some heavy customization (since that’s what they’re really all about).

For each site I created and account, at least 1 station, and customize from there.

Judging on 3 categories:

• Ease of use (interface)
• Unique songs played (minimal repeats)
• Discovering new music
• Freedom

Ease of Use

Pandora easily wins this, they have a great interface to manage your station. LastFM and Slacker aren’t confusing, but Pandora is just tops. Plus it works in my car and they haven’t figured out how to hook up the song limit to the Pre App yet so I can listen pretty much all the time.

Unique songs

LastFM takes this one, I rarely hear duplicate tracks unless I bookmark a song, and even then, it’s a nice balance.

Discovering new music

I’ve found more new music on Pandora, but when I “like” a song there, it plays until I hate it, and I find Slacker to be too predictable. So LastFM takes this one too.

Freedom

No contest, unlimited skips, no inline ads, customization could be more fine-grained, but LastFM takes this category by a landslide.

Winner: LastFM — it takes a little getting used to, but I’m lovin’ it!

posted on okaytim.com