Music Sites

Here's my views on some of the more popular music streaming sites. :)

GrooveShark

Grooveshark is a very nice streaming website. Instead of listening to music like a radio station you can just make play lists of songs you want to listen to write then and there. It is much more convenient than trying to find something to listen to. I've actually had an account on grooveshark for about six months and I use it all the time. I'm very satisfied with it.

I use the free service, but with the payed service you can remove the ads that show up. Although, if you just use Google Chrome like I do, the ads are already gone and you don't have to worry. The paid services look like it can add up to be a lot with paying four to nine dollars a month. Doesn't seem worth it to me.

Pandora

Pandora is one of the, if not the biggest of the internet radio websites. Just search for a genre, band, or song that you like and it will give songs that are related. Its nice if you just don't care what you want to listen too, but if you're like me and are extremely picky about what you want to hear, you may not use it that much. With limited skips each hour and day, it gets bit annoying when you cannot find a song you want even though every song on the play list is “related.”

I have an account on Pandora also, but I don't use it nearly as much as I do Grooveshark. The paid services of Pandora seem a little bit better than Grooveshark. The services gets rid of ads, upgrades audio quality, custom skins, desktop applications, and has fewer interruptions in between songs. That doesn't seem bad for thirty-six dollars a year, but it doesn't seem worth it to me.

SlackerRadio
SlackerRadio is like Pandora, but I like it better. The related songs are actually related most of the time and its stuff I like to listen to. They have a skip limit like Pandora, but I don't use it as much since they actually play music I want to hear. The interface is popular and I think in the future I may use it more than Pandora.

SlackerRadio has two types of paid services. Slacker Plus and Slacker Premium. Both services offer no ads, unlimited skips, mobile station catching, ABC News, ESPN News, and complete song lyrics. Premium offers more like playing songs and albums on demand, play single artist stations, cache albums and songs, and are able to create playlists. Its not as cheap as Pandora though since Plus is four dollars a month and Premium is 10 dollars a month.

Live365.com

This one I did not like all that much. It is setup almost exactly like a real radio, When you search for an artist or song, you get a list of stations that have played it recently. That's all well and good, but if I want to hear it, I want to hear it. I don't want to listen to a station and wait for it, and like a real radio station you get radio ads that annoy you to no end. Just like real life.

The paid services for Live365.com just seem like you pay money to make money. You can create radio stations and the more money you pay, the more simultaneous listeners you can have. I just don't like this one that much, but that's just me.

ShoutCast
Shoutcast was nice, but like Live365 you can only search for radio stations. Maybe its my pickyness coming out again, but I just prefer to listen to what I want at that moment. The radio stations were nice though, I could actually stand to listen to them for a little while when I found a good one.

Shoutcast paid services were kind of like Live365 in the fact you can be a DJ for other listeners. Other than that it didn't seem like a big deal to have the paid services, but maybe I missed something else. Or maybe I'm just being picky.

So it may not be my best work, but my reviews I feel are solid. Have a great day! :)

- Jess