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Comparison of online music services Pandora, Last.fm, and Yahoo Music

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XKnight:
I´ve used pandora for some time now but after reading this article I went to yahoo to try it out!
I will just summarize my short experience with yahoo.

To start you have to be registered in yahoo.com well but that is just like pandora.
After this I was bombed with publicity comming from everywhere, not a good start..
Then I tried to make a customized station and it took me to a webpage with hundreds of musical styles and I had to choose some. Well but I didn´t. I just choose one of my favourite artists "The killers" and I was ready to start hearing my music!
I use opera 9.02 and I tried to open the yahoo browser, well you probably know what happened next... "Browser not supported"...
I was becoming I a little bit bothered with yahoo but I just wanted to give it a chance and I took my IE from the shelve and opened yahoo.com
This time the browser was supported and the player appeared in a pop-up window. I was happy! 3seconds later I was absolutely horrified with a 30second commercial talking about an insurance company! OMG I had never heard such an awful and annoying commercial in a radio ever!!!
After those 30secs of nightmare I finally started to listen to my customized radio!
You are now probably thinking that after all this problems I started listening to my "the killers" similar radio!
But no!!!!!!
The first music was an unknown hip-hop singer, the second was an hard-rock singer mixed with hip-hop. My mouse just flew to the pause button...
You are now expecting that the music paused...
But no!!!!!
I had to wait until the music was in the 30secs mark...
Well I closed the window...

As you can see my experience with yahoo music was pretty bad but I have to admit that the rating system is really good and pandora should improve theirs!

Ups... long post! Hope to help some ppl that still don´t use one of these music services!

PS: The name of this topic is a little bit wrong... lol

allen:
As you can see my experience with yahoo music was pretty bad but I have to admit that the rating system is really good and pandora should improve theirs!
-XKnight (October 23, 2006, 07:29 PM)
--- End quote ---

I'd be glad to hear more discussion on that simple fact.  Personally, I've always felt the simple yea/nay/neutral approach to Pandora was a strength.  Given the quality of music it gives me, the simple system really seems to work -- and without giving me the headache of figuring out how to rate things.

With Pandora, it's simple -- if it's exceptional, give it a thumb up.  If I hate it, thumb down.  If it's nothing special, but suitable to the station I do nothing.  In my experience with other (non music) services where ratings are involved -- say a 5 point scale -- I find I only use 2 or 3 different points on it anyway.  I'm typically afraid to use 5 often, saving that for the best of the best -- defaulting most things that are really good to 3 or 4 while handing out 1 or 0 to what I don't like.  The middle ground isn't really used.

When you're rating one item at a time, it seems to me the middle votes are fairly useless.  Obviously they won't be weighted much, and mediocrity doesn't deserve much for points anyway . . . but all this speil just goes to say this: Simple is better, saves me wasting all this :)

StumbleUpon.com started out with 3 different rating levels -- but later reduced it to 2, opting for simplicity.  More concise, more clear value system.

I'm unfamiliar with the Yahoo rating system, though -- would be curious to hear about it.  Is it "better" just because it's more complicated or does it boast some clever features?

JavaJones:
Agreed Allen - I think people naturally just think "more = better". But simplicity is also often a virtue. If Pandora and Yahoo's rating systems can actually be compared for efficacy *separate* from their recommendation engines, then there might be a discussion here. But really it's all a package and wanting to rate in a more complex way is somewhat arbitrary. The real question is does it play the music you like based on the ratings you give? If yes then it doesn't matter whether you have a 2 point system or a 100 point system.

- Oshyan

jgpaiva:
While rating stuff on pandora, i often use this system:
I don't want to hear it again, i mark it as "don't like it".
If i would definitelly like to hear it again, i mark it as "like it".
If i don't feel it's a music that defines the style of the radio i'm making, i don't rate it.

I think it's a simple yet effective system. It also allows you to have hotkeys that work through openpandora which make sense (having 5 hotkeys would be stupid).

On another matter, having sound commercials makes sense, but i consider it most anoying!

allen:
As a paid Pandora user, I would expect to be exempt from commercials if they ever went that route.  Of course, I could also argue that as a paid subscriber to television programming I expect to be exempt from commercials. We all know that to not be true :)

What really bothers me is when there are services with varrying degrees of ads and intrusions and no option to opt out by means of cash payment.  I respect their right make money off of their products--and advertising is certainly an acceptable way to do it.  But nine times out of ten I'd rather pay out of pocket than with my time/screenspace.

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