Pros and Cons: An Internet Radio Roundup

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Internet radio is a big deal. Millions of people are listening. And there are a ton of internet radio sites out there. The first big one was Pandora. Then came Last.fm. And then a pile of little competitors showed up. But in Spring of 2007, the royalty fees for internet radio went way up, which you'd think would result in only internet radio stations with viable business models surviving and growing. But you'd be wrong. There are still a ton of services out there, which claim to be doing internet radio right, and claim to know how to make money off of it. I've been experimenting with three of them lately, namely last.fm, grooveshark, and spotify, and I'm going to compare them briefly here.

The big name in internet radio is last.fm. On the plus side, it has an enormous catalogue (the biggest, according to them). In practice, its radio stations are pretty good at selecting music, although not customizable enough. You ought to be able to choose certain tags that you don't want and create a totally custom station. But you can't. In addition, you can't pause or play what you want, when you want it - instead, you have to play what you're given. Which brings us to our next service...

Grooveshark is pretty nifty. Why? Well, first of all because it has a nice selection of obscure tracks. But the thing that makes it really special is that you can play any song in the grooveshark library whenever you want, for free. With pause. Its a lot like having every CD ever made in your library. So, whats the catch? Well, there's a few. On the technical side, the site will often choke up, at least here in London. In addition, the user interface is underengineered. And the biggest problem? Grooveshark's two edged sword is the basis for its business model - all the music is user uploaded. So if someone's track is low quality or filled with skips, or their album is mislabeled or incomplete, there is no way of knowing without clicking "play". This is a big letdown, but of course completely fixable with some kind of rating system for tracks. Oh, and the last problem with Grooveshark - I doubt it will survive. They expect to make money by users paying to download tracks or albums. But who would do that? As long as you have the internet (which with wifi and mobile broadband means basically, everywhere), you have access to all the music. Plus, who wants to pay for tracks of questionable sound quality and completeness? If you're going to buy, you'll go to iTunes. So try grooveshark now, before it sinks under the weight of its own awesomeness.

The last "site" I am going to talk about is Spotify. It's not really a site, but instead a desktop software app. The UI is quite nice, although it's missing sharing features, a deal breaker for many. In addition, the lack of portability due to it being a desktop app is unfortunate. Who makes desktop apps anymore, really? And also on the negative side, it doesn't work in the U.S. yet, just parts of Europe. But let's get to the positives shall we? All tracks are 160 kbps Ogg Vorbis - plenty nice for all but real audiophiles. It is advertising-supported, but there are rarely any ads. Suggestions for similar music are generally very good. And you can pause and play whatever you want.

So what's the final verdict? Well, Last.fm wins. Mostly because of ease of use and social media integration/sharing features. But I continue to use all three. Last.fm when I want a nice radio station and will be an active enough listener to "love" or tweet my music. Grooveshark is for when I really want to hear a specific song, especially on a friend's computer. And spotify is really nice when I want to create a custom playlist of music, set it, and then forget it - forget it because there's no social features to deal with. I'm currently listening to spotify.

And what's the diagnosis for internet radio? It appears to me that there is plenty of room for new competitors, since no one is doing everything a user could want - and making money while doing it.