I love music, so it comes as no surprise that I enjoy a good music discovery service. I am constantly on the prowl for music, and with my eclectic taste, the search is endless. Two popular services that I use quite often are Last.FM and Pandora. These two services are responsible for my lack of hard drive space, but I’m not complaining.

I have received quite a few questions regarding both services such as which one is better, what are the differences, and more. The answer is not so simple, and I say this because I like to use both, each serving its own purpose to work together helping me in discovering as much music as possible.

I’ll start with Pandora. Pandora was created by the music genome project and you tell it about some music you like and its starts playing music. Kind of like a personal radio station on your computer. Pandora’s recommendations are based on the intrinsic qualities of the music. Give Pandora an artist or song, and it will find similar music in terms of melody, harmony, lyrics, orchestration, vocal character and so on. Pandora likes to call these musical attributes “genes” and its database of songs, classified against hundreds of such attributes, the “Music Genome Project.”

I love using Pandora and it does what is does quite well, in my opinion. Now let’s take a look at Last.FM. Last.fm is a social recommender. It knows just a little bit about a songs’ intrinsic qualities. It just assumes that if you and a group of other people enjoy many of the same artists, you will probably enjoy other artists popular with that group. How so? Well, Last.fm does so by providing users an optional plug-in that automatically monitors your media player software so that whatever you listen to can be incorporated into your Last.fm profile and thus be used as the basis for recommendations.

Some people are able to tell you, without hesitation, which is better, but I cannot say which is better as I mentioned above that each gives me something stronger than the other can achieve. Last.FM is great. I listen to my music on iTunes. It “Scrobbles” my songs and there they are on my personal website. If you constantly listen to music, like myself, Last.FM starts realizing which sort of groups you match up with and what type of music you would listen to, based on what you are listening to.  It is a social network, so Last.FM is amazing at introducing you to people whom like the same music as you. Not only does Last.FM give you recommendations based on what you listen to, but users (potentially friends) give you recommendations based on music you listen to and what they listen to also.

However, where Last.FM stops working for me is when I want to find music based on music qualities. I really like Dave Barnes subtle  vocal tonalities, rhythmic patterns, acoustic remedies, etc, but can Last.FM help me find music like that? No, but Pandora can. That is where I use Pandora most; when I need to truly find music based on qualities that I like in a song. Most of the time, Pandora is spot-on when I give it an artist of song.

So I use both services. They are great, and I blame/thank them for my current collection of songs totaling a little over five thousand songs that I truly enjoy. Michael Arrington of Techcrunch states, “Each allows you to find new music that you are likely to enjoy. Last.fm does this through analysis of what you listen to and like (and what others listen to and like). Pandora encodes different aspects of music and determines what you might like based on those factors.Pandora is easier to use because it takes absolutely no setup and streams music on the site itself. Last.fm uses tagging and has social network aspects, but you have to download the player to listen to music.”

What Last.fm and Pandora do is hard, and the people who built these services deserve a lot of credit. Given the ambitious scope, it is easy to find examples where each of the services comes up short, but give them a try, and I am sure you will love both!

So, after a lengthy, school-induced hiatus from The Tech Brief, I’m back with a long-overdue review of Meemix, another new personalized, Internet radio service. Having come across it shortly after falling head over heels for Pandora, my expectations were high, so Meemix had a lot to live up to.

Like other personalized Internet radio sites, Meemix uses an algorithm to determine what songs it will play for you. The algorithm makes its calculations based on song parameters and information about the user. Each song can be rated from 6 (Hot) to -6 (Not), and Meemix works with the high scored songs while driving the others away. It boasts creating its playlists based on an understanding of personal taste rather than simply finding songs that are similar to the ones you tell it you like. I’m not sure how that works, but that’s what they say.

So how does it actually work? Well after using it for a few weeks, I’m not too impressed. Until today, my first station didn’t deliver anything that I like aside from the song I originally fed it to create the first station and it always starts with a Linkin Park song. It took a few hours today for a string of songs that I actually liked to start playing, and the station always plays songs from several bands that I have repeatedly rated -6 at first. It rarely plays any of the favorites I’ve defined. My second station actually delivered a really great playlist almost immediately. Unfortunately, the interface completely died, so I couldn’t rate or save any of the awesome songs I heard that day. Since then it has frozen up on me repeatedly.

But the very shiny, Web 2.0 Meemix does have it’s good points, without a doubt. It’s easy to use and it makes it extremely easy for you to log and acquire the music that you actually like (so long as a song on that album happens to play). And—of course—it’s free, being ad-supported, and has the community and other features everyone expects from today’s startups. Undoubtedly, Jango will be one of its prime competitors, being another of the younger Internet radio services. I think Meemix has a lot of potential, but I don’t think I’ll switch to using it exclusively, just because I can’t really create stations that are as specific as Pandora’s unless it’s specifically genre based. Playing songs that sound like ones you like may be an old formula, but it works.

Meemix is in private beta at the moment, but you can learn more and request an invite at meemix.com.

How about another social radio market to join? I use Last.fm and Pandora quite often and love them, especially the recommendation features. Jango is the new kid on the block, and it is not looking to bad at all.

Jango has been in beta for the past few months, and has recently opened up full access to its services. I must say, Jango is incredibly easy to use. When you go to the site you get a search box and a list of “stations.” Pretty simple, eh? You can choose a station, which is a selection of artists, or you can type in an artist’s name, at which point you are taken to a user page, without even having to sign up. I signed up though.

By choosing an artist’s name you in effect create a “station” based around them, which can be made up solely of that artist, or artists that are similar. Jango suggests musicians and bands that it thinks you might like based on your choice, and then you get to choose from Jango’s list and add that artist to your station.

So if you have used Pandora before, you will feel right at home. The concept is basically the same. I can’t tell you how many songs I have discovered using Jango and Pandora. I love it.

The site doesn’t have some things that Last.fm and Pandora do. It does not have a widget, for example although the company said that’s coming. So will I continue to use Jango? Sure! The more the merrier. Be sure to check them out. It is free and you don’t even have to sign up to try them out.

What will they think of next? If you’ve ever wanted to listen to an Internet radio station without going through the trouble of using a PC, Freecom has just announced the solution. The Freecom MusicPal allows thousands of Internet radio stations to be received wirelessly by WLAN – without using a PC. Anyone who would prefer to play the MP3 collection of their PC/Mac or network can simply reproduce MP3 or WAV formats on the MusicPal by streaming. Thanks to the built-in loudspeaker, the MusicPal is completely independent.

The MusicPal can be configured very quickly, and according to the manufacturer it’s easy to operate. The two, handy click dials enable intuitive navigation and fully variable volume adjustment. Radio stations are pre-sorted by genres and country (vTuner service included,) and can be conveniently selected and saved in a “Favorites” list, which can be called up at the touch of a button. The LED display shows the time, radio station, and track. It also mixes in the latest news reports, blog news or weather forecasts of the RSS News Service.

This thing looks awesome and music aficionados can connect the MusicPal to active loudspeakers, a hi-fi system or headphones.

Equipped with WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption, the MusicPal complies with the highest WLAN security standards. The firmware developed for this purpose by Freecom is undergoing permanent further development, and updates are available online for downloading.

I love the idea, but whether MusicPal lives up to the hype remains to be seen. MusicPal should be in stores soon, and I am guessing the price will be around $200 (based on the Dutch prices.) Full specs here.

Other Internet Radio on Amazon.com: